Grange picks fight over pick-a-party ballots

OLYMPIA – Washington voters: Sitting there at your kitchen table, reluctantly trying to decide between a Republican ballot and a Democratic ballot?

Here’s something you might find encouraging. A state farm group is vowing to set up a new election system that wouldn’t require such a choice.

“All you have to do is pretty much take the party affiliation off the ballots,” says Dan Hammock. “Right now, the parties have basically a stranglehold on the entire system.”

Hammock is a spokesman for the Washington State Grange, which in 1934 joined the AFL-CIO and other groups to successfully prod state lawmakers into approving the state’s highly unusual “blanket primary.” Under it, voters could hopscotch back and forth between parties on the same primary ballot.

The popular system – later copied by California and Alaska – survived repeated party-backed court challenges until 2003, when the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it unconstitutional. Starting last year, Washington voters have had to pick only one party’s ballot in the primary.

Hammock said the Grange “absolutely” will push for the change, both in the Statehouse and if that doesn’t work, with a citizen’s initiative.

“We’ll do whatever we have to do,” he said. Under the plan, he said, neither the primary ballot nor the general-election ballot would list candidates’ political parties.

State party leaders scoff at that, saying the current primary allows them their constitutionally guaranteed right of political association.

“We think Democrats ought to pick the Democratic nominee and Republicans ought to pick the Republican nominee,” said Dwight Pelz, chairman of the state Democratic Party. “There has been too much crossing over and it creates a lot of mischief.”

Specifically, the parties argued that opponents were deliberately voting for the weakest candidates in the primary, in hopes of derailing the opposing party’s chances in November.

The whole point of a primary election is to narrow a wide slate of candidates to a single party standard bearer in each race, said Diane Tebelius, head of the state GOP.

“It’s not to have it pick-and-choose, here-and-there, do-whatever-you-want,” she said.

And party affiliation, she said, provides a useful shorthand for voters.

“Voters should want that,” she said. “How else do you know what a candidate is about?”

Voters in the vast majority of states, including Idaho and Montana, have long been limited to one party in the primary. But even in the new system’s second year, many Washington voters are apparently irked at being limited to either Republicans or Democrats, not a little of both. (The pick-a-party rule only applies to the primary. Voters remain free to split their picks between parties on the November ballot.)

At the Spokane County elections office, so many angry voters have been calling that County Auditor Vicky Dalton recorded a message pleading for civility.

“If you feel the same frustration, please do not take it out on my staff,” her recording tells each caller. “Neither my staff nor I have the authority to change this primary.”

“We’re taking probably a couple of hundred calls a day,” Dalton said Wednesday. Although many of those are people with routine election problems, she said, virtually every caller expresses unhappiness with the new primary.

Some are trying to find ways around just voting for one party’s candidates.

“Last week it was ‘I hate this thing,’ ” said Dalton. “This week, it’s ‘I hate this thing and can I write someone in?’ ” (Answer: no. If you vote a Democratic ballot, for example, but also write in a Republican, the latter doesn’t count.)

Pelz, the state Democratic Party chairman, predicts that Washingtonians will get used to the new system. To completely eliminate parties from the ballot would only confuse voters, he said.

“The cure is worse than the disease,” he said. The likely result, he said, would be yet another court fight.

“How many times do the courts have to rule for the rights of the political parties before the Grange gets the message to go home?” he said. “There’s crops to be picked. It’s time for the Grange to go home and be farmers.”

Hammock said he doubts that voters would be confused. Candidates could still use party labels on their Web sites and advertising, he said.

“We’ll end up with a system the people of this state can live with,” he said. “We’re not going to stop on this. People are very upset.”

Tebelius’ take: “It’s never going to happen.”