Democracy for Vancouver

I don’t believe we are practicing any recognizable form of democracy in this country and here is just another example.

Let me say at the outset that I don’t blame anyone for this mess besides perhaps a justice system that is more concerned about promoting a “dog eat dog” world than administering wise jurisprudence.

I am a Democratic Party Precinct Committee Officer (PCO) in the 17th Legislative District. There are exactly 22 PCOs in the 17th LD.

Last week I attended a nominating convention on who the 17th LD Democrats will “nominate” for the primary elections.

And this is where the trouble begins. A couple of years ago, the 17th LD passed new bylaws prohibiting endorsement of any candidate prior to the primary election. This bylaw was intended to try and treat even-handedly all primary candidates and keep the primary a democratic process.

Well the Supreme Court has changed all this. Now we have a “top two” primary system where the two highest vote getters, regardless of party affiliation, automatically advance to the general election.

This causes a problem with regard to democratic principles. If you have two Republicans and four Democrats running in the primary, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the two Republicans are statistically more likely to both be the top two vote getters since the Democrats will split their Democratic voting base four ways and the Republicans only by two.

So it behooves the political parties to try to have only one candidate or one “viable” candidate going into the primary to prevent such a result.

Now why does any of this matter? Whoever gets the nomination of the party will very often actually become the winner of the primary. This is because that person will get money, publicity, endorsements from various organizations and other perks that will lend a significant advantage over the others running. The non-nominated candidates will also find themselves under pressure to withdraw so as to not split the vote as mentioned above.

As a reaction to this top two primary system and the potential undemocratic results it permits, the state democratic party is requiring all legislative district organizations to pick a nominee for each race in the primary.

This violates the bylaws of the 17th LD Dems against endorsing a candidate prior to the primary election. Some would argue a nomination is not the same as an endorsement. I agree they are not exactly the same but a nomination certainly implies an endorsement and would thus violate the intent of the 17th bylaw against such an act by the organization.

So now we are voting at the next meeting to remove the endorsement provision of our bylaws in order to comply with the autocratic mandate of the Democratic State Party Chair Pelz to nominate a candidate. And if we don’t, Pelz will pick the nominee for us. Now how is that for grassroots empowerment!

Seems like it would be more democratic if we just abolished the two party system and the primaries, let people run on their own and let the best person win. Instant runoff voting anyone?

Got Democracy? Nope.

More to come…

Related articles:
It’s not just the 17th - Grassroots Dems balk at party orders - With ‘Top Two’ primary thrust upon them, Democrats struggle over how to nominate

PS: This is just a small part of the story. Please comment about what we want to do about this quagmire.