Sam Reed

The question on everybody's lips is, does the primary matter?

Newspapers get to endorse candidates, and we're at least as smart as them, so here are our endorsements for statewide candidates in the Washington primary election.

The office of Secretary of State Sam Reed has launched a new effort to reach out to voters and encourage participation in the electoral process. The campaign, called "I Will Vote", establishes a presence on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter that provide information about the election and provides a forum for sharing opinions and photos with other voters in the state.

 "It is one of my biggest priorities to engage younger voters, and it has also been a major goal to stay up-to-date with the technology that is dominating the way information is shared," said Reed. "I'm excited to say I Will Vote does both. We are looking forward to seeing visual proof of just how many people in Washington State are dedicated to having a say in the voting process this year."

Secretary of State Sam Reed: Politicker photoSecretary of State Sam Reed issued a press release yesterday in advance of a statewide tour to promote the August 19 "top two" primary in which he predicted that voter turnout for the inaugural primary would hit 46 percent, making it one of the highest in state history.

 "We're expecting a good, strong turnout across Washington," Reed says. "Our voters are intrigued by our new Top 2 system of voting, which once again allows them to pick their favorite candidate for each office, without regard to party. This should be very popular  - it's the Washington tradition to `vote for the person, not the party.'  Even though there are not a lot of hotly contested primaries, we believe the level of interest is very high in this presidential and gubernatorial election year and that we will get a good turnout."

Still, voter turnout in the primary has not greatly fluctuated over the past four decades, with each election's voter turnout percentage falling somewhere in the 40s. It topped out in 1972 with 49 percent, and reached 45 percent in 2004 and 1992.

Opponents of Initiative I-1029, which would require more training for home care workers in the state, have filed a lawsuit arguing that the wording on the ballot petitions, which incorrectly called it an initiative to the legislature instead of one for the people, should be taken as fact.

Secretary of State Same Reed, however, stands by the initiative's misstated intent. 

Solicitor General Maureen Hart wrote a letter Friday on behalf of Secretary of State Sam Reed to lawyers from the state Democratic and Republican Parties sticking up for the legality of the state's "top two" primary. Earlier in the week Democrat David McDonald and Republican John White wrote to Reed suggesting that a 9th Circuit Court injunction banning the primary was still in place despite the Supreme Court's decision that it was facially legal.

"Wholly aside from the practical impossibility of your suggestion, there is no legal basis for it," Hart said of the lawyers' claim that the state should cease with the top two primary. "The injunction was based entirely upon the District Court's conclusion that I-872 would facially violate the constitutional rights of the plaintiff political parties - a judgment that has been reversed. An injunction must be obeyed until it is ‘reversed by orderly and proper proceedings.'"

The top two lawyers threaten that the litigation isn’t over; while the state is moving forward with the top-two primary as planned. If this keeps up, only the top two voters will actually turn out.

Secretary of State Sam Reed continues to stand by the "top two" primary, despite Tuesday's actions from lawyers for the state Democratic and Republican Parties.

Notably, he dismisses the attorneys' arguments that a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals injunction from 2005 would trump the Supreme Court decision upholding the validity of the top two primary.

Tim Eyman, the chief sponsor of the Initiative 985 that would require the implementation of certain traffic congestion reduction measures recommended by State Auditor Brian Sonntag, announced today that the campaign is on the cusp of the 225,000 signatures required to gain access to the ballot in November.

SPOKANE -

Washington's slate of statewide candidates gave speeches this afternoon after becoming the official nominees of the party.

Peter Goldmark, Jason Osgood, and John Ladenburg all spoke on behalf of their candidacy with a few digs at their opponents. Recaps below the fold.