Danny Westneat / Times staff columnist
Locke could halt parties' power grab

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Last month's Democratic caucuses sure looked like government-by-the-people at its finest.

Crowds of energized citizens packed libraries and schools. They huddled and debated, with no lobbyists or special interests in sight. They voted on scrap-paper ballots.

But appearances were deceiving. It turns out as few as 85,000 people actually showed up that day. In a state with 3.3 million registered voters, that means that 2.6 percent of all voters chose our Democratic presidential nominee.

That's better than a few barons in a smoke-filled room. But it hardly qualifies as democracy.

If the political parties get their way in revamping Washington's primary voting system, we'll see a lot more of this sort of closed-shop politics in the future.

The Democratic and Republican parties bring needed order to the electoral system. But now they are attempting the biggest political power grab here in decades.

Party leaders had always bristled at Washington's unique primary voting rules, in which voters were free to choose any candidate of any party. Too many different people with varying viewpoints were interfering with their ability to anoint preferred candidates for senator, governor and other local offices.

As in many other states, they wanted to force these independent voters to sign up with the party, providing their names and addresses. The goal: raising money and the telemarketing of partisan politics.

So they sued the state and won. The courts ruled parties have a right to conduct their affairs as they see fit.

The court didn't mention it, but the voters also have rights. One of them is that they can take the power to nominate candidates away from the parties.
 
Amazingly, this is what the state Legislature has done. They crafted a Louisiana-style primary in which voters can choose whomever they want, with the top two finishers in local races proceeding to the general election regardless of party. The effective message to the parties: We don't want to play by the rules of your restrictive clubs.

In this power struggle the parties appear to have an ace in the hole: Gov. Gary Locke.

He has never seemed like a party lackey, but last week he hinted he will veto the top-two primary. This would install a backup system in which voters can only choose a ballot containing candidates for one party.

The parties ought to be grateful. But if you doubt their true aim here, be advised they intend to sue again anyway, to force the state to give them access to names and addresses of all voters who pick their ballot.

Thomas Jefferson said that belonging to a political party "is the last degradation of a free and moral agent. If I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all."

Locke, who is retiring and will not face voters again, has a clear choice. If he backs the voters and signs the new top-two primary law, he can join Jefferson in political heaven.

If he sides with the parties by vetoing it, then he is going to ... somewhere else.

Danny Westneat's column appears Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at 206-464-2086 or dwestneat@seattletimes.com.

More columns at www.seattletimes.com/columnists.

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