"Top-One" Election System in the 19th Legislative District

By Master Krist Novoselic

In 2004, Washington voters passed I-872, the Grange sponsored Top-Two primary. It ended up in court soon after. In the spring of 2008, the US Supreme Court said the initiative held up to legal theories and most precedents. However, there is currently an as applied challenge - meaning legal arguments are presented in another context. The law will now work its way through the process back to the US Supreme Court.

Voters finally got to use the primary system for the first time in the 2008 election. Considering all of the time and money spent on lawyers, did voters really get what they wanted?

In short, the answer is yes. The 59 percent of voters who passed I-872 didn’t like the exclusive party sections on primary ballots and were angry they had to pick a party in August. I-872 is a majority system where voters get wide-open choices in August, then are asked to coalesce around the top two vote getters in November.

The new Top-Two, for better and worse, carries many of the attributes of the 1935 Grange Blanket Primary. (This system was struck down by the courts.)

Here in the 19^th Legislative District, our state races are usually unopposed in both the primary and general election. This is because constituencies in Aberdeen and Longview - a majority of blue collar Democrats - shape the district. The commission that drew the lines of the district basically settled the election for Democratic constituencies.

In designing districts, the commission considers criteria like compactness, communities of interest and competition. Various criteria must be balanced and as a result competition suffers. In other words – too bad 19^th LD Republicans!

We’ve had good Republican candidates run for office, but the institutional hurdles for election are too high. And the major political parties know this. In 2006, our last contested legislative election, candidates Keath Huff and Tim Sutinen told me they received no financial support from the state GOP. However, they would have had a real chance at election in the 18^th LD – southeast of here. That’s GOP territory where Democrats find themselves in the same situation as losers in the district drawing commission lottery.

There’s continuing legal fuss about the Top-Two - but we actually have a Top-One system here in the 19^th LD. Uncompetitive and uncontested legislative elections are the norm. We’ve had this lackluster dynamic long before I-872 and regardless of how the Court will ultimately rule, most won’t notice any change until the district boundaries are redrawn.