Empowering the powerful

Things just got easier for political corruption in Washington state, thanks to federal Judge John Coughenour, who has overturned 103 years of laws governing political parties by ruling that the century-old means of electing grass-roots party officials is invalid.

Washington’s Legislature passed precinct committee officer laws in 1907 to prevent the kind of corruption that New York’s Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall exercised in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Those state laws, which Coughenour struck down, worked like this:

At the precinct level, in even-numbered year primary elections, county auditors added PCO offices for each major party to the ballot at no substantial extra cost. Candidates had to be members of that party; to vote in that race you were supposed to be a party member. But state law provides no means to ensure only party members vote in these elections. It is an honor system. Yet neither state law nor either major party defines party membership.

At the county level, empowered by law, PCOs hold organization meetings. They control the county party, electing its officers and two state committee representatives.

At the state level, these 78 state committee representatives hold a state organization meeting and control the state party.

Grass-roots voters control precincts by electing PCOs. PCOs control county party organizations. And county party representatives control the state organizations – a perfect example of the first principle of Washington’s Constitution:

Article 1, Section 1: “All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights.”

This system has irritated potential Boss Tweeds among our political elite.

Coughenour’s ruling asserts it is possible to vote for a PCO candidate of a party to which the voter doesn’t belong. Coughenour seems to say ordinary voters cannot be trusted with such power (but political elites can be so trusted).

In practice, Democrats usually vote for Democrat PCO candidates, Republicans for Republican candidates. But as a matter of record most voters, not being party activists, ignore the race altogether. And “independents” are independents because they don’t care about the parties. But on the theory that this crossing over might happen, Coughenour, at the behest of state Republican Chairman Luke Esser, state Democratic Chairman Dwight Pelz and other party leaders, has invalidated our public PCO elections.

Coughenour creates a conundrum. He reasons that giving the public the ability (not the permission) to directly participate in a political party violates the First Amendment right of free association by forcing parties to associate with those with whom they didn’t choose to associate. Who is this “party” to which he refers? There are no “Republicans” or “Democrats,” including the plaintiffs in the suit, who acquired authority except through the system Coughenour’s decision struck down.

Washington has no party registration. People become “official” Democrats or Republicans by choosing to vote for a PCO. If these members’ decisions about their representatives are invalid, derivative decisions by those representatives are invalid. The thrice-removed decisions by anyone empowered by representatives elected by PCOs elected by ordinary folks are also invalid. Which includes every plaintiff in the suit.

By the judge’s standards it seems that no one living may speak for a party and there is no valid political party in Washington.

Those in power have many options to resolve this conundrum, but the grass roots have only one solution: To have a Democrat or Republican party they must immediately organize each party from scratch without any legislative guidelines.

In principle, Coughenour has dismantled the structure of both major parties, removing grass-roots ownership, empowering the current establishments without accountability. The spin began immediately. GOP Secretary of State Sam Reed’s assistant Katie Blinn issued a “clarification” that they know what the judge “meant” – that the invalidation of the election does not invalidate the election results; all the higher-ups retain their offices and power. Only the voters are now powerless.

Judge Coughenour empowered those who appeared before him, to the exclusion of the grass-roots party members who gave Esser, Pelz and the others their power, and in inverse proportion to their authority under the Legislature’s constitutional system: “… governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed …”

That’s the Washington state Constitution. I wonder if Coughenour has ever read it.