Primary critics tout initiative to bring back crossover voting

By ELIZABETH M. GILLESPIE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER 15 September 2004

SEATTLE A day after Washington's first partisan primary in 70 years, Secretary of State Sam Reed said voters made it clear they were "mad as hell" about not being able to vote for their favorite candidates, regardless of party.

At a news conference Wednesday, Reed joined sponsors of Initiative 872, who said they hoped to harness voter anger to boost their bid to change the primary back to a more open system.

I-872, a measure on the November ballot, would give Washington a "top two" primary, letting voters split their tickets as they did under the so-called "blanket" primary, which was ruled unconstitutional. Under I-872, the top two vote-getters in the primary would advance to the general election, regardless of party.

"I-872 would return us to a primary system where you can vote for the person, not the party," Reed said, noting that he was speaking as a private citizen, not in his capacity as the state's top elections official.

State Democratic Party Chairman Paul Berendt said Reed had no business backing the initiative.

"The chief elections officer for the state of Washington should not be endorsing any initiative that's on the ballot," Berendt said. "I have never heard of any elections official that has ever done this."

By law, elected officials can't use their office to campaign for or against initiatives.

In the weeks leading up to Tuesday's primary, thousands of voters called or e-mailed Reed's office complaining about the new system.

A new complaint surfaced as ballots were cast, with some voters alleging that a quirk in the system violated the state constitution's guarantee of "absolute secrecy" in preparing and depositing ballots.

In those cases, when voters failed to one of the three parties - Democrat, Republican or Libertarian - electronic voting machines rejected the ballots, prompting elections supervisors to ask voters if they meant to not pick a party. The workers then overrode the machine so the voters' ions for nonpartisan races would register.

Rhys Sterling, a lawyer from Hobart in southeast King County, said he was shocked when a supervisor asked him if he meant to vote only in the nonpartisan races.

"What part of 'absolute secrecy' doesn't get through with these people?" Sterling said.

Nick Handy, the elections director for the secretary of state's office, said about a dozen voters called and a few e-mailed, calling that part of the process an intrusion.

"I would say it's an issue that we'll want to take a look at in the event that this primary holds up," Handy said, noting the problem wasn't widespread.

Only voters in King and Pierce counties might have been asked about their ballots since only those counties had both precinct counters and ballots with all three parties on them. Four other counties - Kitsap, Snohomish, Chelan and Klickitat - had consolidated ballots but people in those counties simply ped their ballots in boxes.

In counties with four separate ballots - one for each party plus a nonpartisan ballot - state law required that voters be handed all four ballots after signing in and have access either to an envelope or so-called "secrecy sleeve" if they want to concealed their votes, Handy said.

"If the voter was interested in maintaining privacy of the ballot they chose, all of the tools are available to them," Handy said.

Reed's office spent $1.7 million in recent weeks mailing information and running radio and television spots about the new system.

The death of the popular blanket primary began in 2000 when the Supreme Court ruled that a virtually identical system in California violated the First Amendment by failing to protect political parties' right to choose their own nominees without crossover voting. Washington tried to keep its primary system but lost in court.

Using his veto power creatively, Gov. Gary Locke picked a system used by Montana and other states - separate party primaries with no record being kept of which ballot voters ed.

Most people in Washington - an estimated 70 percent - vote by mail, so final turnout numbers won't be known for several days.

Reed's office had predicted Tuesday's primary turnout would be 36 percent to 38 percent.

Don Whiting, an I-872 spokesman, noted that 45.8 percent of voters turned out for the 1992 primary, which like Tuesday's took place in a presidential election year, with open races for governor and attorney general, as well as a Senate seat.