Pick-A-Party Primary: Your Pick Is Public

Washington's relatively new closed primary requires a voter to declare allegiance (at least for that primary) to only one party and limit his or her vote to candidates from that party. Yuck. Declaring allegiance to a political party (even for one election) is so un-Washington. Voters in Washington are independent-minded ticket-splitters so limiting your primary vote to just one party seems like taking away part of your right to vote. (It kind of is, but that's a topic for someone else's blog.)

Back to the topic of this blog. The (Aberdeen) Daily World reports that a person's choice of political party is a public record. A person's choice of candidate is not a public record, just which party's ballot he or she selected.