The Washington GOP precinct caucuses are coming up on February 9th, four days after "Super Duper Tuesday." If the GOP nomination is still up for grabs after February 5th, Washington becomes very important.
However, it is even more complicated here than in Iowa.
In Iowa, the Democrats select delegates by precinct based on which candidate they support. The Republicans just straight-up vote for their candidates.
But in Washington -- speaking for the Republicans, not sure about the Democrats -- we elect delegates as individuals. We can consider their presidential preference if we want to (the rules state that each delegate nominee shall state their preference, or declare themselves uncommitted), but we still elect the delegate, and the candidate preference is not binding.
Further, this only determines who goes to the county convention. Even if 1/4 of the precincts send all Ron Paul delegates, those delegates then have to get elected at the county convention to get to state, and it is theoretically conceivable that none of them would go. Same thing at the state level, to be a national delegate.
And to top it all off, this only accounts for half of Washington's national delegates to the Republican convention; the other half are determined by the statewide primary on February 19.
The Democratic part of that primary, however, does not count for anything. At all. It's a big waste of taxpayer money and time. The Democratic delegates are selected entirely by caucus/convention.
Washington state law requires a Presidential primary be held, but -- because it would be an unconstitutional infringement on the right to association -- does not require that it actually have any meaning. Indeed, it states right in the law (not that such permission is needed, as it is a First Amendment right) that a party may base its allocation of delegates based in whole or in part on the party's caucus and convention process.
And, of course, the Democrats have chosen to do that in whole, and the Republicans to do that in part.
So there's a state law that says "we must have a presidential primary, even if it is not used for anything." Kinda silly. And it also makes the primary results very unpredictable, since many Democrats, knowing the Democratic primary is meaningless, may vote in the Republican primary instead (as is happening in Florida right now, for different reasons, but the same result: the Democratic primary means nothing, and the Republican primary counts for only half).
There is an oath you must sign to vote in the primary, however, and someone who is a Democrat, or who has participated in the Democratic caucus in 2008, cannot vote in the Republican primary unless they lie on their oath.
And note that if you do sign the oath (Democrat or Republican, both parties have them), your name and address will be given to the respective state and county party. This is also in the aforementioned state law. The oath and notification to the party does not apply to the regular primary (to be held this summer), but only the presidential primary.
Cross-posted on <pudge/*>.
Posted by pudge at January 08, 2008 10:28 PM | Email ThisOh, hell. That would never happen in this state... would it?
Posted by: NurseWilliam on January 9, 2008 12:09 AMFirst, the method "now"? It hasn't changed significantly for about 20 years. And in that 20 years, the ability of people to participate has INCREASED. We've always had caucuses here, and only added the primary about 20 years ago, which the Republicans have usually used to some degree, and the Democrats have never used.
So if you're a Democrat in WA, your presidential primary vote has NEVER counted.
And how is anyone gtting "screwed over"? I think there must be something you don't understand. The process of selecting a candidate to be that party's nominee for the general election is not for "the people," but for members of that party. A party is a private organization. It is unconstitutional for anyone, especially the state of Washington, to tell a political party that it must accept what "the people" tell them their nominee should be.
A party may choose to allow "the people" to participate in that process, but "the people" certainly have no right to do so.
If you want to show that someone is getting "totally screwed over," you should probably try to show that those people have some right that is being taken away. And that's just not happening.
It's not about right and wrong, it's about choice. The parties have the ultimate choice. The Republicans choose to allow the primaries to count, and the Democrats don't. You can disagree with that choices, but in a free America, it must remain a choice of the party.
Don't like it? You have three options: join a political party and try to change that choice from the inside; start your own political party; or try to change the laws to make parties have less influence. As to the latter option, this could mean removing party affiliations from the ballot, getting rid of all taxpayer-funded nominating primaries (which, while decreasing party influence, would also make it harder for people to participate), and so on. But the one thing you can't do is force a political party to nominate a candidate its members don't want, to accept the will of "the people" at large over the will of its membership.
Posted by: pudge on January 9, 2008 08:03 AMBut no party should be subsidized by the taxpayers either. There is no way that the D's or R's should have their primaries subsidized by the taxpayer.
We need a separation between political party and state. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of political party."
Political parties should not appear on ballott lines. Candidates should be free to mention that they have the nomination of any party in their voters' guide statements, just like any other endorsement.
Taxpayer funded party nomination conventions are just welfare to politicians. The parties should fund their nominating processes via voluntary contributions, and the process should be deregulated.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on January 9, 2008 09:23 AMPierce County has an IRV election coming up. First in the nation! It is a big deal, and will be very interesting to watch.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on January 9, 2008 09:30 AMAnd I despise IRV. One person, one vote, period. You vote for one candidate and stick with it.
Posted by: pudge on January 9, 2008 11:02 AMKitsapVoter: my guess -- and I would be very surprised if I was wrong, but it wouldn't be the first time -- is that the pool of delegates to the national convention that represent the primary will be chosen from delegates to the state convention. That's how all the primary states do it, as far as I know.
Posted by: pudge on January 9, 2008 01:34 PMIn 2004 at the state convention in Bellevue, the 9 CDs caucused and elected 3 delegates apiece to the national convention. Then the whole convention elected 13 (right?) at-large delegates. They joined the 3 automatic delegates for a total delegation of 43, all of whom supported Bush-Cheney, of course. :)
From what I can gather, this year we have 3 fewer delegates, so: 3 automatic, 27 by CD and 10 at-large. How are these people allocated to the candidates and elected, though? Will the campaigns have slates? I gather that 21 of those delegates must vote for the winner of the primary. Is that winner take all statewide or by CD or what?
I'm sure that each campaign must have their own internal analyses of how everything's going to work. You guys should get Dick Derham to write an exhaustive explanation and link to it as he's the only unquestioned authority. :D I mean, I consider myself at least slightly informed and savvy and I know nothing of how this is going to work right now. I would hate to be a newbie to politics and try to make sense of it! All I have is Veda Jellen's guide to the caucuses from 2000 and all the rules have changed. :(
Posted by: AD on January 9, 2008 09:28 PMOf course, campaigns CAN have slates, informally, at the least. Romney's people can ask delegates to vote for Eric Earling and others who support Romney.
As to the delegates chosen to represent the primary result, I don't know how that is broken down, or how the delegates are elected.
Posted by: pudge on January 9, 2008 09:40 PMAnd not to pick on anyone in particular, but none of the details about the whole process (which used to be hard to navigate and is now much harder) should be secret. I saw a quote from Rick Santorum today that said the nomination will probably be decided at the national convention... whoa. I doubt it will, but still. It boggles the mind how important this is and there's no resource really. Is there even a copy of the WSRP bylaws online?
The WSRP staff members are wonderful people who are probably very busy, but they should put some kind of exhaustive document online explaining the rules and processes for this. :)
Posted by: AD on January 9, 2008 10:11 PMAnd AD, I've been saying for months -- last summer? earlier? -- that this is likely to be decided at convention, and I've seen nothing to make me change my mind. I don't know what that has to do with the process being public or secret, though ... ?
Posted by: pudge on January 9, 2008 10:30 PMAnd I was just mentioning the fact that the nomination might be decided at the national convention to illustrate that whoever we send there might be VERY important, in a way national delegates haven't been for decades.
Posted by: AD on January 10, 2008 02:54 AMIt stinks in some ways, sure. But should we make it so active duty military can participate in EVERYTHING equally? Because that's impossible. They are restricted by DOD policy.
If we were to go that far, then the political party would become completely meaningless. Parties would not be able to have any power to have any conventions to make any decisions, because all such gatherings exclude active duty military.
So where is the line drawn?
Think of MY rights as an individual: I choose to join a party that represents my political views, to further those views. If we open it up entirely to a primary, taking decisions away from the actual members of that party, then that diminishes my right to be a part of a group that picks someone to represent our collective views.
There's no good answer for everyone, but the bottom line is that the military personnel made a choice, and the party (well, the GOP anyway) has come up with a compromise position. No one gets everything, but everyone gets something.
Posted by: pudge on January 12, 2008 12:51 PMI guess Pudge was just too much of a coward to serve the United States of America, by joining one of the US Military services. Why would you expect him to feel he owes any loyalty to those of us who did put our lives on the line...so that he could attack, and usually not debate or answer questions given to him.
A "privileged elitist", or just a wind bag bozo?
Posted by: keeppudgehonest on January 15, 2008 09:36 PMCan't you come up with something that isn't self-parody?
Don't bother answering, because I won't read, let alone respond, to it if you do.
Posted by: pudge on January 15, 2008 09:48 PMTell me your service record, did you serve with John Kerry?
Once again an attack... look at pudge's record over the last year...let's see maybe he can PERL his responses and give us the STATS.
Er ist ein Kopf gefullt mit poopsen!
Posted by: keeppudgehonest on January 15, 2008 10:15 PM