County May Skip Primary Pend Oreille Commissioner Calls The Election ‘Total Waste Of Time’

Pend Oreille County Commissioner Joel Jacobsen wants to stop the train and let Pend Oreille County off when it comes to Washington state’s presidential primary.

With at least passive support from his fellow commissioners, Jacobsen has written a letter asking Washington Secretary of State Ralph Munro to excuse Pend Oreille County from participating in the primary.

“This board believes the presidential preferential election is a total waste of time and money in Washington state,” Jacobsen wrote. “Until such election is significant to both major parties, we believe it is a poor use of the taxpayers’ dollars and we do not want to participate.”

The secretary of state’s office hadn’t received the letter Friday, but Munro was vacationing outside the country and unavailable for comment anyway, spokesman Greg Nordlund said.

County Auditor Ann Swenson is confident Munro isn’t going to grant Jacobsen’s request.

“He’s going to get us moved over to Idaho for sure,” Swenson joked about Jacobsen, a fellow Democrat. “This is a law. You can’t get excused from it.”

Jacobsen admits he’s tilting at windmills.

“I’m exercising my freedom of speech,” he said.

It doesn’t matter to Jacobsen that the state reimburses counties for all costs associated with the primary.

“It’s still our tax money,” Jacobsen said. “It’s a matter of prudent use of the taxpayers’ dollars, and this is definitely imprudent.”

He said fellow Commissioners Mike Hanson and Karl McKenzie told him after a discussion of election costs Tuesday to “go ahead and write the letter, but they were walking out the door.”

Jacobsen has a point, Swenson said. Even in sparsely populated Pend Oreille County, the primary costs about $25,000.

Also, Swenson said, voters resent the requirement to declare a party affiliation if they want their ballots to count for delegate selection. They take their resentment out on her poll workers, Swenson said.

In the 1996 primary, Pend Oreille County voters overwhelmingly chose to invalidate their primary votes by casting “unaffiliated” ballots. Only 568 Democratic or Republican ballots were cast, compared with 2,470 unaffiliated ballots.

Only the 320 Republican ballots truly counted. That’s because Democrats didn’t use the primary to help determine their party nominee, but Republicans chose half of their convention delegates on the basis of primary results. The rest of the Republican delegates were chosen at precinct caucuses.

In the two presidential races since Washington introduced primaries in 1992, Democrats have continued to choose all their delegates at precinct caucuses. Even if they were inclined to change that policy in the 2000 primary, the party’s national leaders have declared that next year’s Feb. 29 primary will be too early to count.

Except for traditional early birds New Hampshire and Iowa, the Democratic National Committee doesn’t plan to honor any primary or caucus before March 7.

Munro pushed to make Washington’s primary one of the earliest in the nation to encourage presidential candidates to visit the state and pay more attention to its voters.

“Secretary Munro has always been in favor of the presidential primary, and also was in favor of moving it to its current date,” Nordlund said. “He felt it would give us a leg up in being able to get candidates to visit the state. That has been one of the primary reasons, no pun intended.”

“It’s a nonevent that costs us millions of dollars every time we do it,” Jacobsen said. “We can’t even get the governor to our part of the state.”

Dale Foreman, chairman of the Republican Party in Washington, thinks Jacobsen is off-base about the candidate-drawing power of the state’s earlier primary date.

“Would (Texas) Gov. (George W.) Bush have been in Spokane yesterday or would (Former New Jersey Sen.) Bill Bradley or (Vice President) Al Gore have been in Seattle yesterday if they didn’t care about our primary?” Foreman asked.

“We have one of the earliest primaries in the country,” he said. “We have a significant number of electoral votes, and they are up for grabs. It is not clearly a Republican or a Democratic state.”

Foreman said the state’s Republican Central Committee hasn’t decided yet how to use the results of next year’s primary, but it probably will continue to choose half its delegates from the primary and half from caucuses.

Both major parties like the primary, even if they don’t choose any or all of their delegates with it, Foreman said.

“It is a tremendous advantage to have a list of people who have identified themselves as Republicans, not only for fund raising but for getting out the message on a limited budget,” he said. “This helps both parties target their message to people who are receptive.”

With that in mind, the unaffiliated majority in Pend Oreille County may wonder whether anyone but Jacobsen is listening.

FAST FACTS Voting rules In Pend Oreille County, the primary costs about $25,000. Also, voters resent the requirement to declare a party affiliation. In the 1996 primary, Pend Oreille County voters overwhelmingly chose to invalidate their primary votes by casting “unaffiliated” ballots. Only 568 Democratic or Republican ballots were cast, compared with 2,470 unaffiliated ballots.