Huck voters disenfranchised in Washington State?

If there's a more ridiculous, opaque and screwed up primary system in the nation than Washington state's, I'd like to see it. When you add in a Republican party chair who sometimes tends to impose his own interpretation on election results, things like this happen. The state Republican party has called the state for McCain based on only 87% of the vote, and with a very tight vote margin in the state so far.

As votes were tallied yesterday by the state Republican Party, Sen. John McCain led in an early count, Huckabee led briefly later in the night and then at 11:30 p.m., state party chairman Luke Esser declared McCain the winner.

But there was a razor thin margin between McCain, with 25.5 percent of delegates, and Huckabee, with 23.7 percent, and there was still about 13 percent of precincts around the state that had yet to be counted.

The Huckabee campaign is not conceding, and is in fact contesting the results, as they should. A McCain supporting party chair should not get final say on an incomplete vote count. What's more, the Republican caucuses only award 18 of the state's 37 delegates. See, Washington state also has a primary, ten days after the caucus. So, technically, the state Republican party can't be declaring anyone the winner until the night of Tuesday, February 19.

This is only a sliver of the utter ridiculousness of the Washington state primary/caucus extravaganza. The gory details below the fold, in case you're interested.

(Update: Goldy is keeping track of a very strange delegate count for the Republicans over at HorsesAss.)

(Update 2: Esser cries "Uncle!" and resumes the count for the caucus. But what about the primary votes we won't have for another nine days? Will they count?)

The state Democratic party awards all of its delegates in the caucuses (and the delegate selection process takes two caucuses and two conventions--after the precinct caucus, delegates have to be weeded out at the Legislative District caucus, then weeded out again at the county convention--or in some counties, but not all, a combined LD/county meeting--before finally winding up at the state convention). But they still participate in the primary, meaning they're included on the ballot, except that it's meaningless.

All Washington voters got a mail-in ballot for the primary. Mine came about 10 days ago, following on the heels of my voter pamphlet. Here's where part of the problem begins:

On the King County absentee-ballot envelope, voters must check off a box next to the Democratic or Republican oath and sign the envelope. The oath declares that the voter is a member of that party who will not participate in the nomination process for any other political party this year.

As of Thursday, King County had received 70,167 ballots for the Feb. 19 primary, and a party had not been checked off on as many as 17,500 envelopes. In Snohomish County, about 30 percent of the 60,000 ballots already mailed in will not be counted because of the failure to note a party affiliation.

This is also the first presidential primary election in which voters have to declare a party affiliation. So it's perfectly understandable that voters used to absentee and mail-in voting just voted as they normally do, and completely overlooked the checkbox on the return envelope. Not that it matters for the Democrats who returned ballots (presumably the majority of King Co. ballots, given the very high Dem registration in the Seattle area), because a primary vote doesn't mean anything, anyway. Which one wouldn't know from their ballot, which says nothing about the caucus, but has all the Democratic presidential candidates listed there, just like you could really vote for them.

Here's what the voters pamphlet says, on page 16 (of 23).

The Washington Democratic and Republican caucuses well be held on Saturday, February 9, 2008. Voters can Participate in both the party caucuses and the Presidential Primary as long as they participate on behalf of the same party. Each party will receive a list of voters who chose to affiliate with that party in the primary. In addition to the selection of delegates, participants have the opportunity to determine the party platform and resolutions, and meet party candidates of a variety of local, state, and national offices.

What's missing? Any discussion of the fact that the primary means absolutely nothing to Democrats, and that it only provides half of the Republican delegates. It's likely that a good percentage of those voters understood the system, and caucused in addition to sending in a ballot, but it's also just as likely that they didn't.

Presumably, the parties were supposed to take care of informing voters of how it all works. Maybe in some areas they did, but I received nothing from the Democratic party explaining the process. In fact, the only communication I had leading up to the caucus was a robo-call from McCain's campaign, inviting me to a reception with him (huh?). Being a high information voter, and a regular Democrat, I was able to figure it all out. But in a year that is bringing so many new voters and cross-over voters out, this was unbelievably messed up.

Our crazy system probably didn't change the ultimate results, but it undeniably disenfranchised voters because there are so many opportunities to screw up, from not marking ballot return envelope with a preference to not knowing that a Democratic primary vote didn't count at all, regardless  of whether the return envelope was marked. Add to all of that the fact that many people can't just take two or three hours out of their day to show up and caucus, and we've got a real mess.

A helluva way to choose a presidential nominee. Keep fighting it, Huckabee. Maybe another high profile challenge to the system will be enough to bring some sanity to Washington state.