Party oath? Absentees swearing, all right

Many absentee voters in Tuesday's presidential primary haven't just failed to declare they are members of a political party.

They've also phoned or written notes to elections offices to protest rules that require voters to sign an oath of fidelity to the Republican or Democratic party in order for their votes to count.

"This is anti-democracy," read a note on one ballot envelope in King County. "Political parties should not control who I can vote for."

In Thurston County, a voter wrote, "It is a terrible shame that we cannot as an American law-abiding citizen vote our consciences without having to register with a party. ... Our forefathers are turning over in their graves."

Others simply wrote, "None of your business," or scratched out the oaths and scrawled, "NO."

Elections officials delicately call these voter messages "love notes."

Fifty to 75 voters a day have been calling the King County elections office to complain about the oath, required statewide for the first time in this primary, said elections spokeswoman Megan Coppersmith.

Voters going to the polls will be asked to declare a party affiliation when they sign the poll book.

"They're angry about it," said Kim Wyman, the Thurston County auditor. That's particularly true, she said, for longtime state residents who are not used to party registration that is the practice most every other place in the country.

In the 1996 and 2000 primaries, voters could choose an "unaffiliated ballot" that allowed them to vote for a presidential candidate without declaring party affiliation — although the vote was not counted in the parties' official tallies.

The presidential primary was canceled in 2004, and the Legislature did away with the unaffiliated ballot for this year.

The Democratic Party won't allocate any of its presidential-nominating delegates based on primary results. It is using the party's caucuses and conventions instead.

The Republican Party will allocate about half of its delegates based on the primary, and the rest through caucuses and conventions.

One-fourth of the presidential-preference ballots returned so far by King County absentee voters won't be counted because voters didn't check a party-affiliation box.

Voters may have left the box blank, Coppersmith said, because they were protesting the public declaration of party affiliation, they didn't understand the primary rules or they only wanted to vote on nonpartisan issues.

Voters don't have to declare a party affiliation to vote on nonpartisan issues, such as school levies, on Tuesday's ballot.

As of Thursday night, 168,067 absentee voters — or 26 percent of 637,989 voters who received ballots — had returned their ballots.

Voters' objections to the declarations of party affiliation echo voters' previous protests against the state's pick-a-party primary, which requires voters to fill in a party-preference bubble on their ballots.

But those party choices are secret, unlike the party-affiliation boxes on the outside of the presidential primary's ballot envelopes. And each party will know who voted in their primary on Tuesday.

Wrote one King County voter to elections officials: "I refuse to vote when my freedom of choice rights are violated by requiring to select one party for the entire election."

Seattle Times chief political reporter David Postman contributed to this report.

Keith Ervin: 206-464-2105 or kervin@seattletimes.com