Washington State Senate approves bill to create a usable presidential primary in 2020

A thought­ful­ly craft­ed bill that would make it pos­si­ble for both of Wash­ing­ton State’s major polit­i­cal par­ties to use a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to allo­cate their nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates in 2020 if they so choose has cleared the State Senate.

ESB 5273, prime spon­sored by Sen­a­tor Sam Hunt (D‑22nd Dis­trict: Olympia) eas­i­ly passed by a vote of twen­ty-nine to eigh­teen this morning.

The bill would do the following:

• Move the default date of Wash­ing­ton’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry from the fourth Tues­day in May to the sec­ond Tues­day in March (as in cur­rent statute, the date remains admin­is­tra­tive­ly change­able if the par­ties want to move it);
• Put the major par­ties in charge of deter­min­ing which names appear on their respec­tive pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lots, instead of the Sec­re­tary of State;
• Require that the arrange­ment and form of the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lots be estab­lished in con­sul­ta­tion with the major parties;
• Allow a major par­ty to request an “Uncom­mit­ted” option on their ballot.

All these changes will result in a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry that com­plies with the nation­al rules estab­lished by the Repub­li­can Par­ty and the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Party.

“A new pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry sys­tem would allow for greater vot­er par­tic­i­pa­tion, expand­ing Wash­ing­to­ni­ans’ access to democ­ra­cy,” Sen­a­tor Hunt said in a state­ment fol­low­ing the vote. “It will pro­vide Wash­ing­ton vot­ers with an easy and effec­tive way to par­tic­i­pate in the nom­i­na­tion of the next president.”

Pri­or to final pas­sage, the Sen­ate defeat­ed an amend­ment spon­sored by Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor Hans Zeiger that would have ruined the bill, mak­ing the pri­ma­ry unus­able by the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Zeiger’s amend­ment would have required the cre­ation of a third, mean­ing­less, “straw poll” bal­lot for vot­ers not wish­ing to affil­i­ate with either of the two polit­i­cal parties.

Although the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry is sev­er­al decades old, it has nev­er been used by both major par­ties before. The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­cans have his­tor­i­cal­ly used the pri­ma­ry to allo­cate at least some of their nation­al del­e­gates, and in recent cycles, they’ve used it to allo­cate all of their nation­al del­e­gates. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty has repeat­ed­ly cho­sen not to use the pri­ma­ry in favor of cau­cus­es. That has prompt­ed the Leg­is­la­ture to can­cel the elec­tion… once in 2004 and again in 2012.

The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is now con­sid­er­ing whether to use a pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry to allo­cate its 2020 nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates. If it does, it will still hold cau­cus­es to select who goes to the con­ven­tion on behalf of its can­di­dates, as well as to adopt plat­forms and res­o­lu­tions. How­ev­er, vot­ers who only wish to express a pres­i­den­tial pref­er­ence would be able to do sim­ply by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the primary.

The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cen­tral Com­mit­tee (WSDCC), of which I am a vot­ing mem­ber, will make a final deci­sion in April.

Assum­ing ESB 5273 is adopt­ed by the House and signed by Gov­er­nor, Inslee in the next few weeks, the WSDCC will have a real choice between a pri­ma­ry-cau­cus hybrid Del­e­gate Selec­tion Plan and a cau­cus-only Del­e­gate Selec­tion Plan.

The WSD­C­C’s choice is of more inter­est than the Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty’s choice for 2020 because the Repub­li­can Par­ty is expect­ed to con­tin­ue its fer­vent embrace of Don­ald Trump, who is a can­di­date for anoth­er term. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic field of pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates is already crowd­ed, with no defin­i­tive front run­ner, and is get­ting more crowd­ed every week.

The roll call on ESB 5273 was as follows:

Roll Call
ESB 5273
Pres­i­den­tial primary
3rd Read­ing & Final Passage
1/30/2019

Yeas: 29; Nays: 18; Excused: 1

Vot­ing Yea: Sen­a­tors Bil­lig, Car­lyle, Cleve­land, Con­way, Darneille, Das, Dhin­gra, For­tu­na­to, Frockt, Hasegawa, Hobbs, Hunt, Keis­er, Kud­er­er, Liias, McCoy, Mul­let, Nguyen, Palum­bo, Ped­er­sen, Ran­dall, Rolfes, Sal­daña, Salomon, Takko, Van De Wege, Well­man, Wil­son (Claire), Zeiger

Vot­ing Nay: Sen­a­tors Bai­ley, Beck­er, Braun, Brown, Erick­sen, Hawkins, Holy, Hon­ey­ford, King, O’Ban, Pad­den, Rivers, Schoesler, Shel­don, Short, Wag­oner, Walsh, Warnick

Excused: Sen­a­tor Wil­son (Lyn­da)

NPI con­grat­u­lates the Sen­ate on the pas­sage of this impor­tant, need­ed bill.

Two Repub­li­cans vot­ed with all the Democ­rats in favor of the bill: Phil For­tu­na­to (R‑31st Dis­trict) and Hans Zeiger (R‑25th Dis­trict). We thank them for their aye votes. It is dis­ap­point­ing that more Repub­li­cans did not vote yes.

We urge the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to take it up and adopt it with no amend­ments so that it can land on Gov­er­nor Inslee’s desk for his signature.