Washington State to appeal blanket primary ruling

[AntiCoup2K4]

State To Appeal Blanket Primary Ruling

September 19, 2003

By KOMO Staff & News Services

OLYMPIA - Washington state will appeal a federal court decision that abolished the state's popular 68-year-old blanket primary that allows voters to split their tickets and avoid party registration.

Secretary of State Sam Reed, a Republican, and Attorney General Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, announced Friday that the state will ask the full 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear the decision made by one of its three-judge panels.

The political parties called the new appeal a big waste of taxpayer money on a challenge that has no chance of succeeding.

The appeals panel, drawing from a U.S. Supreme Court decision that threw out a virtually identical system in California in 2000, said allowing all registered voters to pick nominees clearly violates the parties' constitutional right to pick their own standard bearers.

The state and the state Grange, which pushed through the system in 1935 as an initiative to the Legislature, vowed to keep fighting.

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http://www.komotv.com/stories/27298.htm

[CarlBallard]

1. If the supremes abolish the blanket primary, what should we do?

There have been a lot of ideas about what we should do in the event that our primary loses on apeals. Some of the ideas are less than stelar (like having a Louesania style primary where the top two go on regardless of party or anything else.) but some are right on. The best I think is some sort of IRV. Most likely we'll just have to register by party now, that's too bad.

Some people think we'll just defy the order and the Legislature will just not pass anything. I think that's crazy, but I don't know what would happen then.

[TSIAS]

2. AntiCoup2k

Per DU copyright rules, please post only 4 paragraphs from published articles.

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Taylor :)
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