Precinct caucuses deserve to be shelved

Washington’s two major political parties need to turn off the alarm clock, smell the latte, and wake up to something the public already knows: Precinct caucuses belong in the museum for quaint relics of 19th-century politics, right next to stuffing ballots into a wooden box and torchlight parades for candidates.

Both parties demonstrated amply in the last week that voters just don’t care about caucuses. Some party officials will shrug and say that’s just because this year doesn’t have a presidential election.

Not exactly. Two years ago, while Democrats packed meetings during an open race for White House wannabes, Republican caucuses generally drew a big yawn with their guy assured of the top of the ticket. The yawns were bigger this year, but a yawn is a yawn is a yawn.

The parties repeat this charade every two years, when state officials wax eloquent about how this is the truest form of democracy, where neighbors gather to discuss the issues important to them and push those issues up to the national convention platform. (The Democratic and Republican national committees must be dying to be the first with a platform plank against the city of Spokane cutting down trees on Bernard Street.)

Get real. The platform is controlled by party apparatchiks who railroad the issues that they think will net them the most votes through a Byzantine process.

The caucuses are also described as the ground floor of the noble process that leads to the county convention, which leads to the state convention, which leads – in years divisible by four – to the national convention. So of course, the argument goes, we can’t let just anyone be a delegate to the county convention.

All due respect, but why the heck not?

County conventions are held in late March or early April, usually on one of the first Saturdays of spring. Anyone willing to forgo gardening, golf, biking or whatever else they’re dying to do after a dreary winter, just to spend hours in a school gym arguing Robert’s Rules of Order – well, they deserve to be an automatic delegate.

“But how do we know they’re not Republicans?” the Ds will wail. “How do we know they’re not Democrats?” the Rs will cry.

If willingness to just go to the convention isn’t enough, both parties can hold their county convention on the same day, on opposite ends of town. On the one-in-a-million chance that someone actually is devious, crazy or masochistic enough to try attending both parties’ convention, just make it physically impossible to do so.

Cheese with that whine?

Some folks just can’t let go, whether it’s a team that failed to win a championship or a campaign that showed promise but ultimately failed.

So, it seems, is the fate of the Building Industry Association of Washington, which still hasn’t come to grips with the fact that Dino Rossi is not governor. In its monthly newsletter, BIAW executive Tom McCabe compares the Rossi loss to the Seahawks’ loss in the Superbowl, and finds “striking similarities.”

He equates the issuing of provisional ballots with the issuing of Steeler towels. He equates problems with ballots in King County with penalties against the Seahawks. He equates the certification of Chris Gregoire’s election with the awarding of the Lombardi Trophy to the Steelers. Both Rossi supporters and Seahawks supporters were called whiners when they complain.

But the most interesting logic surrounds his discussion of three Seahawks who endorsed Rossi in 2004 – Matt Hasselbeck, Mack Strong and Rob Tobek. “Although they did not win the Superbowl, Hasselbeck, Strong and Tobek were selected to play in the Pro Bowl – perhaps (I hope) as a reward for having the guts to back the right candidate for Governor,” McCabe opines.

Apparently winning all those games had nothing to do with it.

For the record, the Pro Bowl team is picked through a combination of fan votes, player votes and coach votes. Some 70 million fans voted, and about 69,999,900 probably couldn’t pick Rossi out of a lineup, let alone know who endorsed him more than a year ago.

And can you picture this exchange between two linebackers in Chicago as they filled out their ballot: “Ya know, Eli Manning’s got a good arm, but I’m going with Hasselbeck because he endorsed Rossi.”

“Yeah, Dino was robbed; Matt should go to the Pro Bowl.”

Reminder

Voters across Washington have school levy and bond issues to consider in Tuesday’s election. Spokane County voters who don’t mail their ballots back by Tuesday afternoon can take it to one of five drop-off sites:

“County Elections Office, 1033 W. Gardner Ave.;

“North Spokane Library, 44 E. Hawthorne Road;

“St. Mark’s Church, 316 E. 24th Ave.;

“Spokane Valley Center Place, 2426 N. Discovery Place;

“St. Anne’s Church, 708 E. Lake St., Medical Lake.