The Legislative agenda in the coming year
Published 2:08 pm Thursday, December 20, 2007
I wrote last week about a political agenda for the coming Legislative session.
All the proposals involve constitutional amendments making partisan offices into non-partisan ones.
One comes from King County’s newly elected prosecuting attorney, who promises to ask the Legislature to make the position of prosecuting attorney non-partisan.
The second comes from retiring state treasurer Mike Murphy, who wants his job to be non-partisan.
Murphy, a Democrat, says that in three terms as a county treasurer and three as state treasurer, he has never made a partisan decision.
Opposition in the last legislature came from some party organizations.
I support Murphy’s proposal, but I think it’s more important to make secretary of state, the chief elections official, non-partisan.
When I brought this up with a leading Democratic legislator, she said it should stay partisan “because it’s the only office the Republicans ever win.”
Pierce County’s experiment
Pierce County will start next year with its use of Ranked-Order Voting for county elections.
The system works like this: Voters rank candidates for an office 1-2-3-4. Candidates are eliminated until only one remains.
It’s a possible alternative to the top-two primary form of voting.
Coming in ‘08: A U.S. Supreme Court decision on top-two primary
In the next six months, the U.S Supreme Court will rule on the constitutionality of the voter-approved top-two primary.
Here are possible results:
1. The Court would find the top-two method constitutional, meaning we’d get to see it with all its predicted advantages and disadvantages,
2. The Court would accept the top-two method, but only if all offices are truly non-partisan. The state Grange says it will offer an initiative to meet the requirements. It’s hard to imagine Jim McDermott as a non-partisan candidate for Congress.
3. The Court would rule that only a partisan primary protects the parties’ rights to control their names. The state would try to make the pick-a-party system less objectionable by making it clear that people can vote without marking a party. The party organizations may start a push for party registration.
Evan Smith is Enterprise Forum editor. Send comments to him at entopinion@heraldnet.com
