Precinct officer candidates needed

  • Evan Smith<br>
  • Monday, March 3, 2008 11:38am

Everyone has the chance to vote Tuesday for Democratic or Republican precinct committee officer (PCO), the precinct’s representative to district and county party committees.

About half the precincts in South Snohomish County have no Democrat running for PCO. More than two-thirds have no Republican candidates.

That leaves openings for people to run as write-in candidates and become PCOs.

PCOs help set party policy, the kind of policy I often criticize, but they also work on get-out-the-vote campaigns and provide observers for events like the 2004 recount.

You can tell if your precinct has no candidate by looking at your mail-in ballot, by checking the county elections Web site at www1.co.snohomish.wa.us/Departments/Auditor/Divisions/Elections_Voting or by calling the auditor’s office at 425-388-3411 or 1-800-562-4367.

Anyone can become a registered write-in candidate by filling out a declaration of candidacy form at the auditor’s office by 5 p.m. Monday and paying a $1 fee. This requires elections officials to count all votes whether or not voters properly designate the office and party.

Officials count votes of non-declared write-in candidates when voters properly spell the name and designate the office and party.

In either case a write-in candidate for PCO wins if he or she has the most votes for the position and gets a number of votes equal to 10 percent of the party candidate with the highest vote total in the precinct. So, if the Republican candidate for Congress gets 50 votes in the precinct, and that’s more than any other Republican in the precinct, a PCO candidate can win with five votes.

It’s a way for citizens to take over the parties.

Don’t let pick-a-party keep you from voting

“I don’t want to declare a party,” he said. “I’ll just vote for judges and ballot measures.”

“But, if there’s one candidate you feel strongly about, you can mark that party, vote for that candidate and leave the rest blank,” I answered.

We regularly hear complaints from people who don’t like the pick-a-party system. People who still want to protest can skip the partisan section and go straight to the non-partisan section. But that leaves the nominating process to the partisans.

My ballot shows only one Republican contest and two Democratic races with more than one candidate. I need to just pick the contest that’s most important to me and vote that ballot.

There are few choices because the Republicans and Democrats have done what they could to reduce the number of choices in the primary.

Where there is a choice, we can pick the ballot we want without anyone knowing about it. We may not like the system, but we can use it to have the most influence.

Evan Smith is the Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to entopinion@heraldnet.com.

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