On Monday, Chris Gregoire led in the race for governor. The next day, Dino Rossi forged ahead. It’s likely we won’t have a winner until the middle of next week, two weeks after the final votes were cast.
Lead changes make for an exciting basketball game, but they’re a dreadful waste of time when it comes to governing. Only two months lie between Election Day and Inauguration Day in Olympia, already a tight time frame to plan an effective transition.
It’s just one more example of why this state so badly needs election reform. The growth of voting by mail has changed vote counting from what it should be – a relatively quick, decisive process – to a needlessly prolonged exercise that leaves too much uncertainty for too long in close races.
The remedy is twofold: Move the primary election from September to June, allowing ample time to distribute information and ballots for November’s general election, and require that mail ballots be received by Election Day, not just postmarked by then.
The Gregoire-Rossi see-saw is the second statewide race to be hung up this late. In 2000, it took about three weeks to call the U.S. Senate race in which Maria Cantwell edged Slade Gorton.
This year’s case is particularly worrisome, though, because of the nature of the office. As the state’s top administrator, the governor makes scores of important appointments, and must be ready to hit the ground running as a new legislative session begins. This extended limbo is stalling the transition process, making a challenging job that much tougher for the candidate who finally prevails.
A chief objection to moving the primary to June is that it leaves too little time for legislators to raise money after the session. Too bad, we say – incumbency will have to be advantage enough.
And consider the nightmare of a too-close-to-call primary race that takes two or three weeks to decide. In the seven-week window between the September primary and general election, too little time would be left to ensure publication and delivery of voter pamphlets and overseas ballots.
Voters and candidates deserve more certainty than this. Lawmakers and the new governor – once we have one – should make election reform their first order of business in January.
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