Washington State's primary system argued

[gateley]

Source: MSNBC.com

Supreme Court hears arguments over political ‘branding’ of candidates

Updated: 42 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - Supreme Court justices raised questions Monday about Washington state's "top two" primary system and whether it discriminates against major political parties.

The system was created after state voters approved a law three years ago to allow voters to pick their favorite candidate for each office, with the top two vote-getters advancing to the November general election, even if they are from the same party.

The major political parties challenged the law in federal court, asserting a First Amendment right to select their own nominees without outside forces interfering.

Political trademark?
Several justices appeared wary of the state law, which has been struck down by a federal judge and a federal appeals court.

snip

more... www.msnbc.com

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21085771/

---

Go Washingtonians! :headbang:

[Pab Sungenis]

1. How is this different from Louisiana?

They also have a "top two" runoff process, which can (and occasionally has) resulted in two candidates from the same party squaring off.

[gateley]

2. I'm not sure that it is different. I'm not familiar with Louisana so hopefully

someone who understands it will come along and clarify it for us both.

Are you in Louisiana? If so, do you like this system? On the surface, anyway, I find it appealing.,

[bemildred]

3. Yeah, right., the parties are way more important than what the voters want.

:sarcasm:

The Constitution does not say squat about parties. Parties have no Constitutional rights.

[rmgarrette64]

4. I could have sworn there was freedom of association somewhere

Sorry, but I believe Washington is wrong on this one. Political parties are associations of people, who get together behind candidates, ideas, bills, whatever. They organized primaries in order to formalize the process of standing behind one candidate, in order to maximize the impact of their votes. States, recognizing this reality, got involved in helping the major parties organize their primaries.

Washington, on the other hand, appears to have gone further, and stepped in to the point that they might disallow a party from nominating some one.

Anyway, it's not the parties that have Constitutional rights, but the people in those parties. They do have a right to freely associate, and that includes voting on their nominee.

R. Garrett

[bemildred]

5. They are free to associate as much as they like.

They have no right to tell the electorate who they can vote for.

[harpboy_ak]

6. It's not telling you who you can vote for

If you're not a member of the party, you have NO RIGHT to take part in a party caucus OR vote for a party's candidate in a primary election. In a general election, you can either vote for one of the candidates nominated by a party, vote for a non-partisan or independent candidate, or you can write in for the candidate of your choice.

Read the 1st Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. (Emphasis mine)

The italicized language above has been referred to as "freedom of association" in previous cases. It means that the Federal and state governments cannot tell parties how to nominate their candidates. If they want to close their primaries they can. The state of Washington is trying to do an end run around a previous case where the Supremes told them that they can't hold open primaries (where voters can cross over and vote in another party's primary) unless the party permits it.

As a Democrat it pisses me off that the Alaska Democratic Party does allow such idiocy. If you're not a Democrat, you should have no right to vote in a Democratic Party primary. At least we select delegates and nominate our Presidential candidate in caucuses, where we do require that caucus participants be registered Democrats.

[bemildred]

7. The parties are free to conduct their own primaries with their own resources.

And they can do that however they like. Elections conducted with public money and public resources are to be conducted according to the public's wishes. It the parties don't like that, they have only to look at themselves to see why the public is dissatisfied.