Does the primary mean anything?
In my ideal world, presidential campaigns would look something like this. Round 1: Choose from every candidate. All of them, from the radical socialists to the Christian reconstructionists and everyone in between. Top three vote-getters get to round two. Round 2, two weeks later: pick your president.
Oh well.
This morning in the secret headquarters of Metroblogging Seattle (entrance just to the left of Bruce Lee’s grave marker, watch your head and don’t trip on the Ethernet cables), somebody wondered out loud what was up with Washington’s presidential primary. Does it count for anything or not?
Answer: it depends, but probably not as much as you’d like.
Remember that we’re not actually voting for the candidates yet. No one is.
What we’re doing at this stage is helping the party to pick delegates for the Republican and Democratic conventions. The delegates are the ones who choose the candidate for the election in November. Each delegate pre-announces who they’re going to vote for, so the state party leaders know who to send to get the votes that the state party supports.
(In theory, the delegates could change their votes from what they’ve agreed to, but in practice this almost never happens.)
So how do you pick the delegates?
Well, in a lot of places, the party delegates decide who they’re going to vote for based on the results of the primary. That works in states with ‘closed’ primaries, where (say) the state Democrats know that only registered Democrats are voting in the Democratic primary. Doesn’t work here, because we have an open primary. Democrats can vote for Republicans, independents can vote for anybody, cats and dogs can live together.
Party leaders hate this. (John McCain got a lot of his primary votes in 2000 in states like Washington from Democrats and independents, which didn’t endear him to the Republican party elders.)
So instead, both the Republican and the Democratic parties in this state use caucuses, local meetings of party faithful, to pick their delegates for the convention. The caucuses are run by the parties themselves; the state doesn’t get involved at all.
In fact, until fairly recently (1989) Washington State had no “official” primary at all for the presidential election. All the delegates were picked at the caucus.
That changed when–you see it coming–somebody shoved through a voter initiative to create an official state presidential primary. Except: the initiative was essentially toothless. Both parties are free to use or ignore the results of the election at will.
The Democrats in Washington have already announced that they will ignore the results of the primary. They’re only interested in the caucuses. (And yes, that is perfectly legal.)
The Republicans are allocating about half of their delegates based on the primary results, and about half based on the caucuses.
So does this mean your vote doesn’t count? Not exactly, but it might not have the impact you think it does. If you want to have more say, get yourself over to your party’s local caucus.
For more details, check out this Seattle Times piece from last year. Also, thanks to Dylan for helping put this together.
So does that mean that the primary is basically a very big opinion poll?
Wow. It should a whole more simple than it is. Democracy doesn’t *have* to be complicated.
Er…insert “lot” up there, if you please.
All you need to know is that the presidential primary in Washington state is a waste of time and money and should never have been approved in the first place.
If you want to make a difference, first you have to hope that the nominee isn’t effectively chosen by February 5th, after which more than half of the states will have had primaries or caucuses. It actually looks pretty likely that neither party will come out of February 5th with an overwhelming mandate for any single candidate.
Four days later, on Saturday, February 9th, at 7pm, are the caucuses of both parties. Caucus locations are available at the state Web sites for each party, though some locations are still being finalized so you’ll want to double-check before heading out on February 9th. Caucuses for the Democrats are streamlined this year (no 15% threshold per precinct and no voting on platform proposals), and end at 9pm at the latest.
In my view, it’s a much more democratic system than a primary election, which even when the vote is binding feels more like a glorified opinion poll.
er, make that 1pm-3pm. See, you don’t even have to sacrifice a Saturday night!