Someone wrote in the Everett Herald last week that county officials should count the ballots that they hadn’t counted because the voters didn’t mark “party preference.” These people showed their intent when they voted for candidates of one party.
County Auditor Bob Terwiliger says that won’t happen, even in a hand recount, because state law says that officials can count partisan votes only with the “party affiliation” box marked
The confusion over voters’ failure to mark their party preferences has brought an ominous proposal from Mark Hintz, chairman of the Snohomish County Democratic Party. His proposal is to require people to register as members of a political party. That would mean that voters would get only the ballots of their parties. Voters not registered with a party would get only a ballot for non-partisan offices and issues.
Hintz says with party registration, “we wouldn’t have this problem.”
Yes, no one would have to mark a party preference. But voters would lose a lot in privacy because their party preference would be public record. Party bosses don’t understand that they are making many independent-minded voters tune out the electoral process. Maybe that’s what they want.
More than half the states in the country require party registration, but the system won’t fit with Washington’s populist tradition. Washington voters have been mad enough at having to choose a party privately; they would be even angrier if they had to make a public party declaration.
There’s a simpler way to make the process work: Send each voter three ballots – Republican, Democrat and non-partisan; then, the voter would choose one and send it in.
We know party bosses want as much control as possible, but those bosses need to understand that the people want a say.
The wrong time to elect judges
We decided most of the judicial contests in this year’s election in the primary rather than the general election. That’s because of a state law that puts any judicial candidate who gets a majority of the primary vote onto the general election ballot unopposed.
Contrast this with elections for city council or school board. If only one or two candidates file for one of those non-partisan positions, we just skip the primary and put the one or two candidates onto the general-election ballot. This saves money by having only one election, and it means that the decision comes when more people show up.
Save judicial primaries for times they are needed to whittle a large field down to two candidates.
Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinion@heraldnet.com.
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