Cost of primary election to double

State elections officials are worried the Sept. 14 primary will cost twice as much to have significantly fewer voters casting ballots.

They can’t do anything about the higher cost. Secretary of State Sam Reed said Monday the primary will cost at least $12 million, up from $6 million four years ago, because of the need to print more ballots under the state’s new system.

But in an effort to encourage more voters to mark those ballots, Reed and other elections officials held news conferences in Seattle and Spokane to explain the new system.

“It is imperative that people realize that whether they like this primary or not, they need to participate,” Reed said. “To protest by saying, ‘I’m angry about this – I’m not going to vote,’ … will disenfranchise you.”

For the first time since 1934, voters will not receive a blanket primary ballot with all the candidates of all the parties on it and will not be able to pick a Democrat in one race, a Republican in another and a minor party in some other race.

Instead, they will receive four ballots – one with only the nonpartisan races for offices such as judge and superintendent of public instruction and ballots listing only Democratic, Republican or Libertarian candidates plus the nonpartisan races.

Absentee voters will get all four in the mail, select the one they want, mark it and mail it back. They’ll throw out the other three.

Voters at the polls will deposit the three ballots they don’t want in locked receptacles, take the one they do want into the booth, mark it and turn it in. In Spokane County, that means feeding it into a computerized scanner.

To try to alleviate Washington voters’ long-standing reluctance to be identified by party, Reed and other elections officials are stressing that only the voter will know which ballot he or she chooses and no record will be kept.

The change is a result of federal court rulings in a lawsuit brought by the three political parties. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled the blanket primary violates the parties’ constitutional rights to control who selects their nominees.

“People generally are not happy about this,” Reed said.

When California switched from the blanket primary to a system that limited voters to a single party’s ballot, primary turnout dropped by 19 percent, he said.

But don’t take it out on the poll workers, Spokane County Auditor Vicky Dalton said. “Please express any dissatisfaction with this voting directly to the body that can do something about it. That would be the Legislature,” she said.

Officials also are reminding voters that the new law covers only the primary. The Nov. 2 general election ballot still will have the names of all candidates and all parties, and voters will pick one name per office.

“That’s just like it’s always been,” Reed said.