These Times

Thinking about some primary matters

Kirk Ericson | Mar 14, 20240

I didn’t vote in the March 12 presidential primary.

It’s the first time in years I’ve intentionally not voted. I’ve voted in 56 elections since the general election of 1992, according to my voting record at votewa.gov. The site doesn’t show you how you voted, just that you voted.

For comparison, Mrs. Ericson has voted 68 times since 1992. In matters of citizenship, and civility, she is better than I am.

The way Washington’s presidential primary ballot is arranged, if you voted for a Republican or a Democrat (or if you voted “uncommitted” on the Democratic side), then you must check a box on the return envelope affirming that you’ve voted for either a Republican or a Democrat. If you leave that unchecked, or your preference doesn’t match the party of the candidate you voted for, your vote won’t count.

If you follow the rules, your name, address and your political preference will become known to the Democrat and Republican parties.

I don’t want to be allied with a political party, maybe because I’m a newspaperman and it’s been drilled into us the importance of avoiding overt demonstrations of bias. I’m allowed more latitude because I’m an opinion page columnist, but I started as a newspaper reporter and old lessons learned young die hard.

However, if the Extremist Moderate Party ever becomes a thing, I will check that box.

I will admit I’ve voted for Democrats, Republicans and third-party candidates, and I’ve made one political campaign donation in my life. I sent $10 in 2022 to Rep. Liz Cheney’s campaign, and for the next couple of months, I received emails with lovely pictures of Liz standing in front of a Wyoming backdrop.

Washington had a similar deal in 2020 for our presidential primary, which occurred March 10. I have no recollection of voting in that one, but I did, according to votewa.gov. I imagine I was consumed with other matters, including avoiding the plague like it was the plague.

I’ve heard grumblings about our state’s primary procedure during the past couple of weeks, mostly from people upset about the party preference matter. And some people appear to be gumming up the works intentionally. A reader told me he voted for Nikki Haley in the GOP primary and marked his party preference as Republican, although he’s as close to being a Republican as an orca is to my left foot. He said he knows two other people who did the same.

I know of a daily newspaper editor who didn’t vote in this primary because of the party-preference element.

I sent some questions last week to spokespeople for the state Republican and Democratic parties, mainly to find out what they’ll do with the information revealed by our state’s presidential primary. I included both email addresses in the address line so they’d know I was asking both of them the same questions. Fairness, you know?

The Democratic spokesperson consented to a phone interview. The Republican spokesperson did not.

Here are some questions and answers with Stephen Reed, communications director with the Washington State Democratic Party.

Q: In the 2020 presidential primary, were you able to identify a lot of people who you didn’t know were Democrats?

Stephen Reed: I think the vast majority we know because they’ve participated in previous elections or we’ve had good responses through knocks [on doors] or phone calls. It does help expand [our knowledge] of people who have moved into the state who we might not have known were Democrats, or folks who move out of state and someone else is in that house. Then there are people who pass away or may change their party preference.

Q: What do you do with that information once you get it? Do you send mailers? Do you send emails?

A: None of the information is used for emails but it can be used for mail because we get the address. We don’t get email addresses and we don’t get phone numbers, so people who participate in the primary aren’t going to get phone calls from us asking them for money, unless they signed up for something or given money in the past. We have a massive voter file, a database basically, and those folks get grouped into people who we believe are strong Democrats, people we believe are strong Republicans, and people who we believe are sort of in the middle on a score of zero to 100. And we’re going to be focused on the people in the upper quadrants, 50 and above, to make sure they’re turning in ballots for the general election.

Q: How valuable is this information that you’re getting from our presidential primary?

A: The value in it is ensuring folks who participate in the Democratic primary are not participating in the Republican primary. So, you’re not getting folks who are voting in both and you’re getting folks who are declaring their support for our party, and that’s valuable in and of itself because it shows their public support for our party. It’s useful in curing our list and ensuring that we have the most up-to-date information because each cycle is different and every cycle has new voters and folks moving around from one county to another and from one state to another.