Aug 19 2008
It’s primary election day, and without regard to party, you may select whoever you want
Primary elections are supposed to be like nominating conventions in that party loyalists choose the person they believe will be the best candidate to carry the party standard into the Fall general election.
In most states that’s what happens, but not in Washington. I don’t know if it’s because people have no sense of political party affiliation, or if they just don’t want to be bound by party labels, but historically in this state, people have preferred to vote outside party constraints.
Therefore, generally speaking, parties don’t nominate their candidates for office….anybody can.
About all a political party can do is to disavow candidates running on their label, if they do not approve or support them. They have little to do with their selection. This is clearly placing the cart before the horse, and it is far removed from the purpose of primary elections, which is to nominate.
In Washington, we don’t care about that, we just want to vote for anyone who attracts our fancy. That means that parties, (and by extension, the philosophies they embrace), are without significance in our primary election. Therefore some guy who calls himself a Democrat, but really isn’t, or some woman who says she’s a Republican, but never has been, can be chosen to run in the general election whether or not the party whose personal the candidate assumes, objects.
There’s something wrong with this picture, and merely dismissing all this with the brush off that “we prefer to chose whomever we like”, doesn’t fix the damage. Sending the top two vote getters to the general election is not at all like nominating candidates to carry the party standard.
Why do we think we get a better result this way?
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