How come now, I asked Olympia lawyer Jim Johnson, you’re hot for the Cajun primary to replace our blanket primary, when only months ago you were against it?

Johnson represents the Washington State Grange, which ran the initiative that established our blanket primary in 1935 and, now that it has been declared unconstitutional, has filed an initiative for an alternative. The alternative would still permit voters to do cross over voting without having to register by political party, but instead of the top vote getter in each party advancing to the general election, it would be the two top vote getters for each office sought.

Which means that in some races that could be two Democrats or two Republicans with the other party shut out in November. One thing it would mean, says Johnson, “is that there would be no more third parties in Washington. The Libertarians, who joined the Republicans and Democrats in challenging our blanket primary, have committed suicide.”

And he is not hot for the Cajun primary, he said. He is hot for the blanket primary, which he still believes conforms to our state constitution no matter what the three judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals did. “Ten out of 13 judges say ours is fine. Our initiative starts with the proposition that our primary stays as is and the Cajun primary would only go into effect if the final judgment is entered throwing ours out. “

The state and the Grange, in separate appeals, are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to have the 9th Circuit reconsider its decision declaring the blanket primary unconstitutional, which the 9th Circuit has refused to do. One argument Johnson will make that the state has not is that if you look at the language of the 9th Circuit decision, drawn largely from the U.S. Supreme Court decision invalidating the California blanket primary, which was modeled after ours, “you can’t run anything but a closed primary (voters identified by party), which would affect a majority of states that are not doing that. The Supreme Court should make the rules in this important presidential election year, given the controversy after the 2000 election.”

I prefer the “open primary, private choice” Montana system whereby each voter picks a party ballot but that choice is not recorded. Independents like me may pick a party or abstain. Primaries aren’t for us anyway. But Johnson says this would be a problem to administer because Montana has few absentees whereas most Washingtonians vote absentee. Send them three different party ballots and chances are some will vote on and return more than one, invalidating their vote.

A plus for the Cajun primary is that it would end this nonsense of a third party filer being the determining factor in a race, as it was for Slade Gorton, who would still be a U.S.. senator today otherwise. In a Cajun primary, Libertarian Jeff Jared would not have been on the November 2000 ballot to siphon off votes that were useless to him but devastating in a close race.

I saw Gorton the other day and asked him about it. recalling he had done an op-ed for the Seattle Times back in 2001 pushing the Cajun primary. He helped Johnson and the Grange with their initiative and, like them, prefers the blanket primary, but says the Cajun is the closest thing to it.

“Most people do not regard themselves as capital D Democrats or capital R Republicans,” he said. “They want a much broader choice.” Does he think we’ll win in our appeals? “No,” he said. “But Jim (Johnson) thinks we have a chance and he’s been successful in the past.”

A point made in the Grange initiative is that when the courts threw out the California blanket primary, 3 million fewer voters went to the polls in the next primary, the lowest primary voter turnout in state history. Here, in a series of statewide hearings in 2001, the vast majority of voters said if they couldn’t continue cross over voting or avoid party registration, they wouldn’t vote in the primary at all. I think they meant it. That’s a lot of people withholding their input in an election year as important as this one.

(Adele Ferguson can be reached at P.O. Box 69, Hansville, Wa., 98340.).