Washington has vote by mail elections for all offices and initiatives. They work very well. One can sit at the dining room table with beverage of choice and the Voters’ Guide. This year my primary Voters’ Guide-reading beverage may be iced tea spiked with Everclear, for reasons that will soon become apparent. Although our final results don’t come in for a week or so after Election Day, it’s a better way to vote than standing on line at a school or megachurch for hours to cast a vote. In state offices, the top two vote getters go on to the general election regardless of party. This means in some races two Republicans or two Democrats may face off against each other.
Our primary ballots arrived in the mail yesterday. I opened mine up to see which races feature our perennial loser candidates. (Every state I’ve lived in has these folks. Texas was crawling with them. Sad thing was, in Texas they often won.) It looks as if the perennial losers are ALL running for Governor. THIRTY-SEVEN CANDIDATES. The names are listed in random order, so I had to hunt to find the incumbent. The Lieutenant Governor post attracted a crowd as well after the incumbent decided to leave politics to join the Jesuit order. (A higher calling, indeed.)
The Voters’ Guide arrived today. It’s slightly thinner than the September issue of Vogue magazine, with worse clothes. The candidate party affiliations are all over the spectrum. There are the usual Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and Greens. Republicans come in multiple shades: Trump, Pre 2016, and GOP. (In previous years, several candidates used the GOP Party as their affiliation because they thought Seattleites would be turned off by the Republican label. Most of them lost anyway.) Then there is the Fifth Republic Party. I thought, what does the French government that went into effect in 1958 have to do with a Washington primary? It turns out that the current iteration of Fifth Republic is a Democratic Socialist party in the mold of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Some of the parties listed may consist of the candidate alone. At least the nominating conventions aren’t “super spreader” events in the Covid-19 era.
To my fellow Washington voters: Please fill out and return your ballot by August 4. No postage needed.
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