Washington State Republican Party submits five names for 24 presidential primary ballot

The 2024 pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lot in Wash­ing­ton State is set to include five names on the Repub­li­can side, Sec­re­tary of State Hobbs’ office announced today, acknowl­edg­ing the receipt of a list of names from the Repub­li­can Party.

“The Wash­ing­ton State Repub­li­can Par­ty has sub­mit­ted five can­di­date names to go onto the 2024 Pres­i­den­tial Pri­ma­ry bal­lot: Don­ald Trump, Ron DeSan­tis, Nik­ki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, and Chris Christie,” the office announced in a state­ment. “Under RCW 29A.56.031, each major polit­i­cal par­ty has until Jan­u­ary 9th to sub­mit can­di­date names for the Pres­i­den­tial Primary.”

RCW 29A.56.031 is the state statute gov­ern­ing place­ment of names onto the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lot. The cur­rent statute — which dates back to 2019 and which NPI was heav­i­ly involved in get­ting passed — makes it the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the major par­ties to draw up a list of names for the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lot out of respect for their First Amend­ment right of free assembly.

That way, the Sec­re­tary of State is relieved of the prob­lem­at­ic bur­den of decid­ing which can­di­dates should be on each par­ty’s bal­lot. In oth­er states, sec­re­taries of state do have that bur­den and are wrestling with the ques­tion of whether to exclude Don­ald Trump on Four­teenth Amend­ment grounds, due to his incite­ment of an insur­rec­tion on Jan­u­ary 6th, 2021, exact­ly three years ago tomorrow.

Wash­ing­ton State law stipulates:

Each par­ty must deter­mine which can­di­dates are to be placed on the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry bal­lot for that par­ty. The chair of each par­ty must sub­mit to the sec­re­tary of state the names of the can­di­dates to appear on the bal­lot for that par­ty no lat­er than six­ty-three days before the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. Once sub­mit­ted, changes must not be made to the can­di­dates that will appear on the ballot.

The pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry is what’s known in state legal par­lance as a spe­cial cir­cum­stances elec­tion. How­ev­er, in real­i­ty, it’s not an elec­tion at all, but rather a nom­i­nat­ing event that will influ­ence the allo­ca­tion of del­e­gates to the Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can nation­al con­ven­tions this summer.

The actu­al votes for the par­ties’ nom­i­nees will be cast in Mil­wau­kee (for the Repub­li­cans) and in Chica­go (for the Democ­rats) by nation­al con­ven­tion del­e­gates elect­ed from all fifty states, the Dis­trict of Colum­bia, and U.S. territories.

If you’re a Wash­ing­ton vot­er, you’ll be sent a bal­lot in a few weeks that will have a Demo­c­ra­t­ic col­umn and a Repub­li­can col­umn. If you wish to par­tic­i­pate, you must vote for only one can­di­date from one par­ty, and you must attest that you under­stand that by par­tic­i­pat­ing in that par­ty’s pri­ma­ry, you are choos­ing to affil­i­ate with that par­ty — at least for the moment in time that you cast your ballot.

The attes­ta­tions will be word­ed as follows:

“I declare that my par­ty pref­er­ence is the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty and I will not par­tic­i­pate in the nom­i­na­tion process of any oth­er polit­i­cal par­ty for the 2024 Pres­i­den­tial election.”

“I declare that my par­ty pref­er­ence is the Repub­li­can Par­ty and I will not par­tic­i­pate in the nom­i­na­tion process of any oth­er polit­i­cal par­ty for the 2024 Pres­i­den­tial election.”

The attes­ta­tions are iden­ti­cal except for the names of the parties.

When you vote for a can­di­date in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry, you are express­ing a pref­er­ence as to which per­son you want one of the major par­ties to nom­i­nate. If enough vot­ers share your pref­er­ence, the can­di­date you like will receive an allot­ment of del­e­gates to the nation­al con­ven­tion from Wash­ing­ton. You can help influ­ence who becomes a del­e­gate, too, if you’re inter­est­ed, by going to a cau­cus. And if you’d like to be a del­e­gate your­self, you can throw your hat in the ring.

After the pri­ma­ry is cer­ti­fied, the major par­ties will receive a list of names of every­one who vot­ed in the pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry. How you vot­ed is a secret; the fact that you vot­ed and which par­ty you affil­i­at­ed with is disclosable.

As men­tioned, on the Repub­li­can side of the bal­lot, you’ll see these names:

1. Don­ald Trump
2. Ron DeSan­tis
3. Nik­ki Haley
4. Vivek Ramaswamy
5. Chris Christie

(It might be more accu­rate if the Repub­li­can side of the bal­lot said Auto­crat­ic instead of Repub­li­can, but that’s a dis­cus­sion for anoth­er post!)

On the Demo­c­ra­t­ic side of the bal­lot, you can expect to see these names:

1. Joe Biden
2. Dean Phillips

Each par­ty has its own process for qual­i­fy­ing. The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty’s process is spelled out in its Del­e­gate Selec­tion and Affir­ma­tive Action Plan, or DSAAP, an impor­tant par­ty rules doc­u­ment that is draft­ed by the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Cen­tral Com­mit­tee and approved by the DNC’s Rules and Bylaws Com­mit­tee. (I sit on the WSDCC as a vot­ing member.)

The 2024 DSAAP states:

Pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, who are eli­gi­ble by DNC rules to obtain del­e­gates and who seek to par­tic­i­pate in Washington’s pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry will be required to sub­mit a peti­tion for can­di­da­cy to the Chair of the Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty with 1,000 sig­na­tures of Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers who pub­licly declare them­selves to be Democ­rats, and a $2,500 admin­is­tra­tive ser­vices fee. Forms for the state­ment of can­di­da­cy and peti­tion will be avail­able on Decem­ber 1, 2023.

The forms must be received no lat­er than Fri­day, Jan­u­ary 5, 2024, by 5:00 PM PT, and must be returned by cer­ti­fied mail to Wash­ing­ton State Democ­rats, PO Box 4027, Seat­tle WA 98194, or in per­son to the par­ty affairs staff at the office of the Wash­ing­ton State Democ­rats, 615 2nd Ave., Suite 580, Seat­tle WA 98104. For pur­pos­es of this sub­sec­tion (A)(1)(c), “received” means: (i) Being phys­i­cal­ly received by a mem­ber of the WSDCC staff by the close of busi­ness of the required dead­line; or (ii) for appli­ca­tions received online or elec­tron­i­cal­ly, by mid­night, of the required deadline.

This evening at 5 PM was the dead­line for Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates to sub­mit their peti­tions. The Wash­ing­ton State Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty now has until next Tues­day to turn over its list of names to the Sec­re­tary of State.

The Repub­li­cans’ qual­i­fi­ca­tion process is a bit dif­fer­ent. The require­ments include pay­ing a $20,000 fee — that’s eight times more than what Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates have to put up — and obtain­ing a dozen sig­na­tures from mem­bers of the party’s state cen­tral com­mit­tee rather than get­ting a thou­sand sig­na­tures from voters.

Mil­i­tary and over­seas bal­lots for the March 12th pres­i­den­tial pri­ma­ry are due to be mailed out on Jan­u­ary 27th. Bal­lots to in-state vot­ers will fol­low on Feb­ru­ary 23rd.