A Bit More on the Primary

Just a few legal issues to wrap up.

I-872 destroys the existing presidential preference primary, the part about lists of participants, since it says that "no voter may be required to disclose political faith or adherence in order to vote." This statement of rights applies to all elections, not just the primary, so it must include the presidential preference primary, which explicitly allows party declarations, which is why the Democrats participate at all: to get the list of voters who participated in their primary. And if parties will no longer get lists of voters who participated in their primary, I doubt if they will participate at all (especially the Democrats).

So this very likely spells the complete end of the presidential preference primary. I think in four years, if I-872 still stands and there is not an exemption for this added to the law, Washington will be caucus-only in 2012.

And I noticed something else. The I-872 people said during the attempt to pass I-872 that a yes vote on it would "preserve the blanket primary." But this is patently false: what I-872 did was to destroy the old nominating primary, which included the system under which the previous blanket primary operated, and institute a new two-tiered general election system, where the first ballot is called a "primary." This is not a blanket primary any longer, it is a first ballot in a general election.

If our state Supreme Court cares so much about people knowing what they are voting for, and overturning initiatives where there was no confusion at all about what the initiative did, shouldn't they overturn this initiative for its proponents making clearly false statements about what it does?

Just a thought.

Finally, a thought about party preferences. About names. Why not create a new party, called "Republican Nominee"? That is the name of the new party. And if someone who is not the actual nominee of the party uses that name, well, they are falsely claiming to be the nominee. Now the confusion argument that Roberts, Alito, and Thomas said wasn't obvious, is perfectly obvious. So not only could I-872 be overturned on such grounds, but anyone not the nominee who uses that designation could be sued for misrepresentation.

Normally, you couldn't have a party called "Republican Nominee," because the Republican Party would sue over the confusion. But in this case, obviously, the party would choose to allow it, since it would be used for their benefit.

I am not advocating anything above. Just adding more fuel to the fire, erm, food for thought.