Next Up, The WA Caucus AND Primary

By Matt H. Wade at Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0

Next Up, The WA Caucus AND Primary

February 7, 2008

Comments

Guess it isn’t over until it is over, at least for the Democratic Party. WA State has Caucuses on Saturday, and a primary vote on Tuesday (you have to sign a statement saying you are only doing one, and not for the other party. Clarification, you can caucus and vote in the Primary, so long as they are the same Party, you can’t Caucus Democratic and vote in the Republican Primary, and the Minor Parties are not in the Primary). So the candidates swarm the next location.

Here are details as of tonight on planned visits by presidential candidates:

Hillary Clinton: Rally, 8 to 10 p.m. Thursday, Pier 30, 2431 E. Marginal Way S., Seattle.
Barack Obama: Rally, 11 a.m. Friday, Seattle’s KeyArena.
Mike Huckabee: Rally hosted by his wife, Janet, noon on Friday, Health Sciences Building at Northwest University, 5520 108th Ave. N.E., Kirkland.
Barack Obama: Rally hosted by his wife, Michelle, in Spokane on Friday. No further details were available.
Hilllary Clinton: Campaign organizers were searching for a venue in Tacoma for a rally on Friday.

Hmm, except for the possible Clinton visit to Tacoma, Seattle, Seattle, Seattle. There are rumors of a Spokane visits by all. Seattle is home of egregious voter ~~fraud~~ systemic irregularities leading to many questionable votes being counted in 2004 (King County). Dean Logan, former Elections Director in King County, is now being taken to task in his new job in Los Angeles for significant issues in CA’s Super Tuesday voting (NB: Dean Logan is a hated figure in WA Republican politics, viewed by some as incompetent – that LA hired him is considered amazing by some – see current Drudge links). Meanwhile, the candidates descend on the next State

As the candidates digested the results of the Super Tuesday nominating contests, they began focusing Wednesday on what’s next, and their biggest immediate target, especially for the Democrats, is this state’s precinct caucuses Saturday.
After largely ignoring Washington state in recent months except to raise money, several campaigns — including those of both Democratic contenders — have hastily scheduled appearances here for the candidates and/or their aspiring First Spouses.
They also have begun shifting campaign staffers from Super Tuesday states to Washington, which has the West’s second-highest number of nominating-convention delegates.

But remember, delegates are decided by state parties, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. In Washington State:

The Republicans allocate about half of their delegates in the caucuses and half in the state’s Feb. 19 presidential primary. The Democrats, though, choose 80 of their 97 delegates through a process that begins with the caucuses, forcing their candidates into a frantic scramble to get to Washington before this weekend.

There you have it — the Parties decide how to allocate their representatives. As I think it should be. And I think that every serving Congressman and Senator should be delegates to their parties’ conventions. Plus state party officials. Too much focus now is on just the Presidential Candidate, when the Party Platform is just as important, and ignored for now.

On the Democratic side, I’d say Senator Obama has Washington (this is a Kucinich/Obama state, at least on the wet side)

UPDATE: I clarified a few items as noted. Voter fraud does not have to be a criminal conspiracy. It can be a broken system. To quote the WA Voters’ Pamphlet “the 2004 General Election revealed a number of flaws in Washington’s election system.” Most of the significant issues have since been resolved (you will always have some issues), but it took a close election to give the impetus to remove “more than 370,000 duplicate and illegal records from Washington’s voter registration rolls.”

4 responses to “Next Up, The WA Caucus AND Primary”

Darryl

February 7, 2008 at 2:39 pm

You seem pretty mis-informed about Washington state politics.

“A State has Caucuses on Saturday, and a primary vote on Tuesday (you have to sign a statement saying you are only doing one, and not for the other party).”

Wrong. Voters can participate in both the caucus and primary, but must do so within the same party.

“Seattle, Seattle, Seattle”

Well, DUH! That is, by far, where the most people are. When counties (rather than people) start voting or caucusing, I’m sure we’ll see a change….

“Seattle is home of egregious voter fraud in 2004 (King County).”

This is a myth (where do you wingdings get this stuff???). There were some illegal votes found in the state in 2004—a tiny percentage of the total vote—but they were spread out all over the state. Initially, the Republicans focused on finding illegal votes only in King County (perhaps leading to your mistaken idea) But, the Democrats found illegal votes in other counties. In the end, King County didn’t even have the largest percentage of illegal votes. There were four small counties (Asotin, Pend Oreille, San Juan, and Wahkiakum) in which no illegal votes were found—but it is not clear that anyone was even looking in these counties. And there were four counties (Benton, Yakima, Ferry, and Grant) that had a higher error rate (i.e. illegal vote/ballot cast) than King county.

Then, there was a trial held in June of 2005 in which the Republicans opened by claiming they would prove election fraud. In the end, the trial that cost each party two million bucks, yielded no evidence whatsoever of election fraud in King County or any other County in the state. They only showed ordinary errors of the type found whenever an election is closely scrutinized.

“Dean Logan is a hated figure in WA politics, viewed by some as incompetent – that LA hired him is considered amazing – see current Drudge links).”

Nope…this is more wingnut mythology. There is a faction of rabid righties who vilified Dean Logan, but almost no one else. Given that they are a minority of state residents (and certainly a small minority of King County residents) your statement is numerically in error. In fact, during the trial, we learned that among his peers (election directors in other counties) Dean Logan was highly respected.
Laura

February 7, 2008 at 4:50 pm

Very misinformed. There was no voter fraud. The Republican Sec. of State found no fraud. The Republican judge who reviewed the case brought by the R party found no fraud. One of the prosecutors driven out of office for failing to act as a political agent for Karl Rove was driven out because he, a Republican, would not, in his words “drag innocent people before a grand jury” in a politically motivated witch hunt over imaginary fraud. If you have any integrity you will correct your post.
Tano

February 7, 2008 at 9:12 pm

“If you have any integrity you will correct your post.”

don’t hold your breath, Laura.

They need to keep the meme alive – it is the one thing they hope will be able to sustain them in the next governors race.
Richard Gardner

February 9, 2008 at 3:09 am

Tano pronounced,

don’t hold your breath, Laura.

I have modified the post, but probably not enough to satisfy you. There is a belief systems among party partisans in WA as to what happened in the 2004 Governors’ race (both sides). On a total number basis, King County was where most of the issues occurred, though some much smaller counties had a higher percentage of issues.

WA State has a confusing Primary system. As Hillary said last night (roughly), “Some of you have gotten ballots, and I’m not sure why, but caucus for me on Saturday.” Um, a voter initiative in 1988 requires a vote, so it is the law, even if there are no delegates selected that way by the Democratic Party. So there is indeed lots of confusion in WA State.

Even worse, there are reports of over 25% INVALIDATION of primary votes so far because the voter’s did not select a party on the mail-in ballots – not that it matters on the Democratic selection process.

As for me, I read both Sound Politics and Horses’ Ass. And Chris Gregoire is the Governor (childish what some folks say, Rossi conceded).

WA Voters’ Pamphlet (see page 18)

Does any other state have official myspace election reminders?