Primary blues

With election season just around the corner, absentee voters are getting the first taste of life without Washington's unique blanket primary.

And so far, it's a bitter pill to digest.

Voters must choose their color-coded ballot among the rainbow of options (The Republican ballot is green? Their tribute to Ralph Nader for the 2000 election, apparently) and discard all other options.

This is what happens when we let the parties control the people.

A recap: California's blanket primary system, which is similar to Washington's, was found unconstitutional by their Supreme Court. Leaders from Washington's Democratic and Republican parties, who disliked the blanket primary because they felt it took power away from them, formed an unusual alliance to sue the state and make Washington follow suit.

Amazing. We finally get the two parties to agree on something, and they agree on abrogating the people's will for their own.

The Washington State Supreme Court upheld the parties argument, so the Legislature was forced to come up with a new system. After much wrangling during this 2004 session, Gov. Locke signed into law the Montana primary, which requires voters to choose one party privately and vote on that ballot alone.

The fight, however, is not over. Reports are popping up all over the state of people who voted who are protesting by not voting, mistakenly invalidating their ballots or having to pay extra postage to mail the bulky paper in some counties.

And no one has even gone to the polls yet.

But because we have one system this year doesn't mean we can't have another later. Initiative 872, which will be on this year's ballot, calls for a move to a top-two primary, where the top two vote getters advance to the general election, regardless of party. (Although be careful what you wish for; that system would have set the table for a potential race between Christine Gregoire and Ron Sims in the gubernatorial race this year.)

But don't protest by not voting or pulling out of the political process. Call your local legislators, the governor and, most importantly, state Republican Party Chair Chris Vance and Democratic Chair Paul Berendt.

The party chairs are the ones who took away our rights to be independent voters. It's up to us to fight to get them back.