Tag Archives: Washington State Presidential Primary

New Hampshire Sets January 8, 2008 for First Presidential Primary

Posted on November 23rd, 2007 | Comments Off on New Hampshire Sets January 8, 2008 for First Presidential Primary

Iowa leads off the 2008 Presidential Sweepstakes with its caucus on Thursday January 3, 2008. Last night New Hampshire settled on having their primary on Tuesday January 8, 2008.

New Hampshire’s decision announced by their Secretary of State, came after the Michigan Supreme Court by a 4 to 1 vote on Wednesday gave the go ahead for Michigan Democrats and Republicans to hold their primary on January 15, 2008.

As the NY Times notes, “New Hampshire law dictates that it hold the first primary in the nation, which it has done since 1920, and the Jan. 8 date makes the 2008 primary the state’s earliest ever.
This year, the primary calendar has been nothing short of a mess, with states leapfrogging one another’s contests, and the national parties imposing penalties on states that scheduled their primaries before party rules allowed. Michigan, for instance, could lose half of its Republican delegates and all of its Democratic ones”.

You can click here to view the current 2008 Democratic Primary schedule.

You can click here to view the current 2008 Republican Primary schedule.

Washington State Democrats will hold their precinct caucuses on Saturday February 9, 2008 to start the process to select delegates to the Democratic National Convention to be held in Denver, Colorado on August 25 -28, 2008.

Washington State Democrats hold a series of conventions for the delegates selected at the precinct caucuses. These include:

Precinct Caucuses – Saturday February 9, 2008
Legislative District Conventions – Saturday April 5, 2008
County Conventions – Saturday April 19, 2008
Congressional District Conventions – Saturday May 17, 2008
Washington State Convention – June 14 & 15, 2008 – Spokane, Washington

Click on this link for a summary and rules of the Democratic delegate selection process.

Washington State will also hold a Presidential Primary on February 19, 2008. It will not be used by the Democrats to select delegates but it will allow a lot more people an opportunity to vote for who they would like to see nominated for President by the Democrats. The Republican Party will select half of their delegates based on the vote by people selecting a Republican ballot on February 19, 2008.

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Grassroots Democrats Missing in Action on Internet for August 21, 2007 Primary

Posted on August 23rd, 2007 | 1 comment

If you were hoping to find insight and inspiration on the Internet from local Washington State grassroots Democrats for the August 21, 2007 Primary you were bound to be disappointed. A close look at the websites of the local Democratic County and Legislative District organizations right before the Primary was disappointing to say the least.

The local grassroots Democratic groups were looked at first for how well they alerted people visiting their websites about the Primary. A second point of comparison was whether the organizations were using their websites to gear up for the Feb. 2008 Caucus and Presidential Primary next year. These are just a little over 5 months away.

The first step in evaluating the Grassroots Democratic organizations was to check whether or not they even had a website. The list of websites used was taken from the list on the Washington State Democrats website . Out of 39 county Democratic organizations, 11 (28%) did not have a website. Out of 49 Democratic Legislative District organizations in the state, 19 (39%) did not have websites.

Here is a summary of what was found when looking at the Democratic websites.

Washington State County Democratic organizations:

Washington counties – 39
county Democratic organizations with websites – 28 (72%)
August 21 Primary date mentioned- 10 on first page + 2 more in calender = 12 (31%)
counties with primary endorsements posted – 5 (13%) King, Pierce, Snohomish, Thurston, Whatcom
number including a link to endorsed candidates – 4 (10%)
counties listing Feb. 9, 2008 Caucus date – 3 (8%)
counties listing Feb. 19, 2008 Presidential Primary date – 3 (8%)
county Democratic websites with links to Presidential candidates – 6 (15%)

Washington State Legislative District organizations:

Legislative districts –49
Legislative district organizations with websites – 30 (61%)
August 21 Primary mentioned – 7 on first page + 6 more in calender = 13 (27%)
Legislative District organizations with Primary endorsements posted – 12 (24%)
number including a link to endorsed candidates – 4 (8%)
Legislative Districts listing Feb. 9, 2008 Caucus date – 6 (12%)
Legislative District organizations listing Feb. 19, 2008 Presidential Primary date – 2 (4%)
Legislative District websites with links to Presidential candidates – 4 (8%)

To be fair 5 counties did not hold a primary. Those counties are Asotin, Ferry, Garfield, San Juan, and Wahkiakum. But that still leaves 34 counties that did hold a primary election.

Why is website presence in a campaign important? Googling on “Democratic endorsements Washington August 21, 2007 Primary” yielded the following results on the first 2 pages:

MajorityRulesBlog
47th Leg District Democrats
Lefty Blogs – Metropolitan Democratic Club
SEAMEC 2007 endorsements
47th District Democrats
the Stranger
King County Democrats
Wash Fed of State Employees

Googling on “Washington State Primary Endorsements” yielded:

MajorityRulesBlog
Sierra Club (MajorityRulesBlog post)
the Stranger
36th Distrct Democrats
LeftyBlogs
Washington State Women’s Political Caucus
SEAMEC endorsements

Googling on “King County Democrats 2007 endorsements” yielded:

King County Democrats
34th District Democrats
47th District Democrats
MajorityRulesBlog
Peter Sherman’s website
46th District Democrats
Gael Tartelton’s website
Jean Godden’s website
the Stranger

Having endorsements on the Democratic websites and candidates receiving endorsements and listing them on their website drove traffic to these sites. This gives additional exposure to the Democratic Party and their endorsed candidates.

By way of comparison, googling on “”Washington State Republicans 2007 Primary” produced one relevant Republican hit to a right wing blog at the bottom of the second page. Typing in “Washington State Republicans 2007 Primary Endorsements” yielded little of the Republicans but brought up the following in the first two pages:

Washington State Stonewall Democrats
MajorityRulesBlog
LeftyBlogs
Washington Federation of State Employees
the Stranger
47th District Democrats
BlogNet News
WashBlog

Despite the lack of a strong internet effort by the Democrats in making and listing endorsements, where it was done it obviously had an impact on visibility of the Democrats.

There is a reason that the Republican presence is so minor in the google searches. Despite the untapped potential of the Democrats in using the web to get exposure and use the internet for organizing , they were far ahead of Republican Party efforts.

The Washington State Republican website has only county organizations. There are no Republican legislative district organizations listed.

The Republicans had only 15 county websites listed for the 39 counties in Washington State. And they seemed to be even less aware that a Primary was occurring. Only 4 listed the August 21, 2007 Primary date on their website and only 2 had endorsements. Regarding the Presidential Campaign only 2 had a link to the 2008 Republican Presidential candidates.

Just in terms of number of sites, the Democrat’s 58 grassroots organization sites outnumbered the Republicans by almost 4 to 1. Now if they can just get some web savy and get links up for the General Election in November with endorsements listed and links to endorsed candidates they can have a much stronger presence on the web.

And they also need to copy the Democratic State Party’s Road to the White House Presidential candidate’s links and add them to their webpages. Island County Democrats have links with pictures of the candidates which is a nice touch. So do the Spokane Democrats. and the Walla Walla County Democrats. Whitman County, Thurston County and Mason County are the only other counties that currently have links to the Democratic Presidential candidates.

And I could only find links available on the websites of the 1st , 6th, 44th and 45th District Democrats.

One additional element that the Democratic organizations should add to their websites is the free fundraising link for Democrats by ActBlue. ActBlue is set up to raise funds for all the Democratic Presidential candidates. John Edwards for President, for example, using the ActBlue website has raised $3,599,983 from 44,058 donors.

MajorityRulesBlog recently set up an ActBlue page for all the Presidential candidates. You can click on the link to see what one could look like for the Democratic organizations. Each organization would get exposure and credit for funds raised for the candidates.

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Iowa Governor Rules out Christmas 2007 Caucus

Posted on August 10th, 2007 | Comments Off on Iowa Governor Rules out Christmas 2007 Caucus

In what is continuing to be an absurd leapfrogging process, Iowa’s Governor Chet Culver has ruled out moving Iowa’s caucus to December of this year. According to the Washington Post, some of Iowa’s politicians had proposed that in response to the actions reported yesterday of South Carolina Republicans moving their primary to January 19, 2008.

For the record no moves at this time are being considered in Washington state to compete with the Holiday shopping season or Christmas on Tuesday December 25th, 2007, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah or New Year’s Day on Tuesday January 1, 2008.

Meanwhile Iowa’s Governor Culver is quoted as saying that, “The bottom line is Iowa will have the first caucus and we’re going in January.” As the Washington Post reports:


“Culver said Iowa would work with New Hampshire officials to find mutually agreeable dates for their contests and acknowledged that both states might need to be flexible in terms of the spacing between the caucuses and the primary — by Iowa law eight days — and the days of the week when the events are held. He also said Iowa officials will take into account holiday travel and disruptions and seek to avoid scheduling the caucuses on New Year’s day.
Asked if he expects the Nevada caucuses to be held between events in Iowa and New Hampshire, he said, “They are now.” Asked if he cared whether that remains the case, he said, “I do care”.”

Current Iowa law requires that Iowa hold its caucus 8 days before any other state. The Politico reports that Governor Culver would change the state law if necessary to keep its caucus in 2008. The issue is further complicated because New Hampshire also has a law requiring that it hold its primary 7 days before any other primary.

“The dominoes were set tumbling this week when South Carolina Republicans announced they were moving up their primary to Jan. 19, a Saturday.
According to New Hampshire law, the Granite State would then have to hold its primary at least seven days before, which would mean Jan. 12 or before. But Jan. 12 is a Saturday and New Hampshire has always held its primaries on Tuesday, meaning New Hampshire would probably move to Jan. 8, forcing Iowa into 2007. Politico learned, however, that New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner would, for the first time, consider a date other than a Tuesday. With Culver’s pledge to change state law if he has to, all three states might be able to wedge into January. “

Washington State is scheduled to hold a Presidential Primary on Feb 19, 2007. Republicans will allocate 51% of their delegates according to the vote. Washington State Democrats will allocate none from this vote. Instead they will allocate delegates based on a rather complicated caucus process that starts on Feb 9, 2007 and culminates in the bulk of the delegates being selected at Congressional District caucuses on Saturday May 17, 2008. The remainder are decided by an “Election Committee” based on credentials on Sunday June 17, 2007.

Washington State Republicans are also slated to hold their preliminary caucus on Feb. 9, 2008

We have previously written about our concerns with the caucus selection process by the Democrats to select delegates to The Democratic National Convention and their ignoring the results of the Washington State Presidential Primary that was set up by an initiative to the Legislature, Initiative 99. Initiative 99 was enacted into law by the Washington State Legislature in 1989.

The stumbling block for the Washington State Democrats participating in the Presidential Primary has to do with the fact that Washington State does not require voters to declare a Party affiliation when they register to vote. Until recently in regular elections Washington State had a blanket primary where you could vote for any candidate for office, whether a Republican or Democrat. That has changed in that you can only vote for a specific party in the primary now but there is still no official party registration.

Many grassroots Democrats like the caucus process but the vote by the Washington State Democratic Central Committee on April 29, 2007 was not unanimous . The Seattle Times reported the vote as being 119 to 42 to support the caucus over the primary to select delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

If the Washington State Democrats want to be more sincere about involving the public in the process of picking the Democratic nominee for President they need to include a plank in their state platform supporting voter registration by party.

Otherwise it is just a little too convenient to use the existing non-party voter registration process in Washington State as an excuse to hold a caucus which severely limits voters being able to participate in what one might characterize as the ultimate American voting experience – electing a President of the United States.
See “Presidential Primary Makes Sense” for more discussion on this issue.

Other questions about the Presidential Primary process in Washington State are answered at “Presidential Primary FAQ” and “Presidential Primary Background Paper” which are posted on the Washington Secretary of State’s website.

One of the more updated sites keeping track of the changing dates of the 2008 Presidential Primaries and Caucuses is at Stateline.org

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