Another route is the most obvious now for those who cannot accept anything but a wide-open primary in which all voters may vote for any candidate. The Grange and others would better spend their energies promoting an initiative to convert to a completely non-partisan election system for all local, legislative and statewide offices.

While technically justified in pursuing what they viewed to be their overriding constitutional rights through the courts, the state’s political parties have roused widespread ire among voters of all political stripes. The virtual elimination of political party relevance may be the final, unintended result.

A nice op-ed by the Seattle PI, except that they overdo it just a bit with the last sentence. Governments don’t make political parties relevent by crafting election laws, political parties are relevent on their own by influencing politics.

This logic trap is one that the PI is joined in, seemingly, by our party leadership(s), in that they see the way an election is run as the key to their power. I like to think that a group of people, empowered by their numbers, who are interested in influencing the opinions of citizens in a democracy would be relevent anyway. And, that you could run any sort of election — open primary, IRV, non-partisan — and that the political parties would have say in what the results are.