Legislative Commentary

Fishing season in our local lakes opened this past Saturday, and like many others, the Schoeslers took to the water hoping to land enough trout for dinner – except in our case, it was four generations of our family: Dad, me, daughter Veronica, son Cody and grandkids Kaegen, Macy and Elyse.

Is there any better way to spend part of a Saturday, no matter how many fish end up on the stringer?

A guide to Washington’s presidential primary:

The presidential campaigns are all over the news, especially as they relate to primaries and caucuses – so it was no surprise that a Whitman County constituent asked me this past weekend about Washington’s presidential primary, which will be May 24.

After explaining the basics, I decided to also share them in this report, knowing other folks may have similar questions.

Will my vote count?

It depends on which candidate/party you choose to support. I’ll quote information from Secretary of State Kim Wyman, who is Washington’s chief elections officer: “The Republican Party will use the Presidential Primary results to allocate 100 percent of their convention delegates. The Democratic Party will not use the Primary Election results to allocate any of their delegates. They will rely solely on the results of their Precinct Caucuses on March 26.”

Problems at several of those Democrat caucuses in March had local party leaders thinking they should follow the lead of Republicans next time around, and use the presidential primary results to award delegates instead of ignoring the results completely. Republicans also held precinct caucuses, more than two months ago, but those were primarily for organizational purposes.

I already took part in a local party/precinct caucus. May I also vote in the presidential primary?

Yes, each registered voter will receive a presidential primary ballot in the mail. But to prevent “crossover” voting all those who decide to vote and submit a ballot must sign a political-party declaration on the ballot-return envelope, and it match the party of the person for whom you vote. It is a temporary declaration, keeping with our state’s tradition of not requiring voters to permanently register as members of a particular party.

I am not registered to vote in Washington. Is it too late to sign up if I want to vote in the presidential primary?

There is still time to register, but you will have to do so in person at your county elections office. The deadline for registering online or by mail has passed. The deadline for in-person registration is May 16.

The primary is officially May 24, but it actually is the final day of a voting period that begins May 6, when ballots are mailed out and Accessible Voting Units (AVUs) are available at voting centers.

How will Republicans use the primary results when allocating delegates?

This year Washington is allocated 44 delegates to the GOP national convention, which will be July 18-21 in Cleveland, Ohio. The Republican National Committee determined this number based on variables that include population and number of Republicans in office.

Eleven of the 44 are at-large delegates, who will be elected from the floor of the GOP state convention (May 18-21 in Pasco). Three more are automatic delegates: the state Republican Party chair, the party’s national committeeman and its national committeewoman. The remaining 30 delegates are elected at caucuses in Washington’s 10 congressional districts: three per congressional district.

Elected delegates will be bound to the results of Washington’s presidential primary for the first round of voting at the Republican National Convention. The at-large group proportionately follows the statewide vote.

Delegates from the congressional districts are also allocated proportionately. However, if a candidate wins a majority of votes in a district, or only one candidate receives at least 20 percent of a district’s votes, that candidate wins all three of the congressional district delegates.

While it is possible for one candidate to win all of Washington’s GOP delegates, Washington is not a winner-take-all state; think of it as 11 different elections (each of the 10 congressional districts plus the statewide results). More details, including how to get on the state convention ballot to compete for national convention delegate slots, are on the state Republican Party website.

Although ballots for the May 24 primary are distributed and tallied at the county level, Secretary Wyman’s office has put together an excellent set of information and answers, available online at http://vote.wa.gov.

The presidential primary was created in 1989 by a citizen initiative to the Legislature and set for the fourth Tuesday in May. Because other states have moved their primaries to earlier dates, Secretary Wyman had attempted during the 2015 legislative session to permanently move our state’s presidential primary to March, in hopes of drawing more candidates to appear before Washington voters. The Senate approved that change twice; however, the Democrat-controlled House refused to vote on the question.

State law also allows for a special bipartisan committee to reschedule the primary on a case-by-case basis (and it had done so in the past, most recently 2008, when the primary was changed to Feb. 19). As Senate majority leader I serve on that committee and had supported a move of this year’s presidential primary to March, but Democrats on the panel blocked that change.

More information about this year’s elections:

Candidate filings may be submitted by mail starting May 2, while the traditional week of in-person filings will be May 16-20. This year’s election is as big as they get in our state, so we will see people filing for positions in Congress, the state executive branch (Washington has nine independently elected state executives, from governor to auditor to insurance commissioner and more), the Senate and House of Representatives and the judicial branch.

Once election officials know who is running for office they may prepare and mail ballots for the primary voting period, which begins July 4 and culminates with Election Day on Aug. 2. Our state continues to use the “top-two” primary, meaning the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of the political affiliation they claim.

The next Election Day will be Nov. 8 – as always in our state, the second Tuesday in November. This is the general election; ballots will go out Oct. 10.

According to the state’s budget office, which regularly estimates population growth, Washington’s population topped seven million in 2015. That number provides context for a recent announcement from Secretary of State Wyman about our state’s population of registered voters hitting the four-million mark.

‘Not guilty’ doesn’t mean ‘all is forgotten’ with state auditor

One of the side discussions during this year’s legislative session involved Washington’s state auditor, Troy Kelley. He had been indicted by a federal grand jury in 2015 on charges that included money laundering, tax evasion and possession of stolen property.

The charges against Kelley were not related to his public office but to a private business he owned before being elected auditor in 2012. Even so, the House of Representatives was considering a vote to impeach Kelley, a former House member. The idea was dropped because impeachment proceedings could have conflicted with his federal trial, which got under way in March.

That trial concluded Tuesday, with the jury finding Kelley not guilty on one count and unable to reach a verdict on the other 14 counts. Although the jury has made its decision, there is no getting around the fact that the auditor’s office has a lot of work to do on government accountability, and I don’t see how the public could ever trust Kelley to lead our state’s watchdog agency.

The office seemed to function well enough when Kelley took an extended leave of absence without pay following his indictment. For that reason, and because he shouldn’t be trusted to do the job for which the voters hired him, I believe Kelley should do the right thing and resign now. It’s true that his term ends later this year anyway, but stepping down early would allow for a clean slate when candidate-filing week comes along next month.