Yesterday I sent in my Primary ballot. It was a very simple ballot: There’s a Democratic side and a Republican side. Choose which party you want, and vote for one candidate.
On the way into work this morning I heard on the radio that the Primary ballots won’t count. The delegates will not be decided based on the Primary ballots. They will be decided by caucus. So what’s the point in sending out a ballot when the only thing on it is a choice of which candidate you want give delegates to, when the delegates aren’t chosen by ballot?
Expect some toady wonk to come in and condescendingly tell you that you’re ignorant of the process and this is how it works, so go study your Civics textbook and get back to us after you learn something.
But I’m not one of those people, and I view those types of responses as tantamount to asking me to swallow something undemocratic.
Oh, gods. No one tell him about the electoral college or we’ll be here all night!
Generally speaking, the people who meet at the caucus will probably choose the same way the voters did, but they don’t HAVE to. It’s the equivalent of your boss sending around a survey to figure out where to hold the Holiday Party - chances are he’ll go with the majority, but he’s not bound to.
I don’t hold it as undemocratic, 'cause it’s the primaries. The primaries are not “voting” for leaders, there’s no one to vote for until the parties choose their candidates. We don’t VOTE until the general election (at which point it doesn’t really count, either, thanks to that electoral college thing.)
What I’m getting at is this: Why send out a ballot when it’s not going to be used? There are no initiatives or local measures or anything else. It’s just the choice of either Democratic or Republican candidate.
The state legislature decided to throw a primary. I’m guessing they’re the ones who sent out the ballots.
The Washington Democratic Party decided to throw a caucus (from the links above, this has been their method in the past as well). Since it’s the party (and not the state) deciding on the delegates, they get to ignore the decision of the legislature. So if you want to have input on a Democratic candidate, you have to go participate in the caucus.
The Republican side seems a little more complicated. It sounds like they’ve previously done both a primary and a caucus, and allocated a percentage of WA’s total republican delegates to each. It sounds like they’re still doing that, so sending in a primary ballot for a republican candidate has at least some effect.
And it didn’t sound like the OP was confused about how primaries / caucuses work, it just sounds like Washington holds both (which may be an oddity, usually you hear about states having just one or the other), which led to him posting.
That is correct. I’m not confused about how primaries/caucuses work. I was confused as to why I got a ballot, and then I hear that it doesn’t mean anything. This is my first Presidential election in this state, so I didn’t know they did caucuses here.
Anyway, I just got off ths phone with the Democratic Party guy. He said the ballots are ‘pretty useless’. (But not completely useless.) He said that the Party chooses which candidate receives the delegates through the caucus, and that the state ballot doesn’t mean anything. Except the results of the state primary balloting will be released to the media. He said people like to vote ‘in a herd’, so releasing the bollot results will encourage people to go to their caucusing places.
So I’ll show up on Saturday. I just wish they’d have said something before I wasted a stamp.
Because here in the SoW, while the law stipulates that there will be a Presidential primary (and was recently revised to move it up in the calendar), it does not stipulate that the parties involved need to pay any attention to it.
The Repuglicans, out of the goodness of their hearts, will award half their delegates according to the primary results; the Demoncrats will award their entire slate using the [DEL]easily manipulated[/DEL] time-honored caucus/convention model.
A plague o’ both your houses!
— Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet, Act III Scene 1
