Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Washington political parties are back in court, hoping to take down the state’s voter-approved, Supreme Court-approved Top 2 Primary.

The parties have long objected to the state’s tradition of wide-open voting that allows us to “vote for the person, not the party” when we pick our finalists for the November General Election.  First, they and their brethren from California brought down the time-honored “blanket primary” that allowed voters to pick their favorite for each office, splitting their tickets if they like.  The Legislature passed a Top 2 system back in ’04; Governor Locke vetoed it, leaving a backup plan for a Montana-style primary that restricted voters’ to one party’s candidates. Voters widely disliked it and quickly passed a plan by the state  Grange and Secretary Reed, Initiative 872, that created a system that winnows the field to two per office, rather than specifically nominate an R and a D.The parties sued again, and won two rounds in the federal courts before losing in a 7-2 opinion from the Supreme Court.  They’re now back with an “as-applied” challenge in U.S. District Court in Seattle, retracing many of the same arguments – that the system is unconstitutional because it lets non-members pick the party standard-bearer and lets candidates appropriate the party name. The state rejects every point and asks the court to dismiss the challenge after the expensive decade of litigation.

The Democratic, Republican and Libertarian parties, getting ready for a court date in October, have submitted their papers to Judge Coughenour, often using identical language. One quote says the party is “irreparably injured by the forced adulteration of the party’s nomination proces, by the state’s active encouragement of crossover-and ticket-spitting, and by the resulting dilution and potential suppression of its message.” They ask that the system be tossed in favor of the old Pick-a-Party Primary.

The state Attorney General, representing Reed and the voters of Washington, will present views in a reply brief.  The state, using language that parallels the Supreme Court ruling, says the system is not a nominating primary and that no party earns an automatic berth on the November ballot.  Rather, the Top 2 is a winnowing election and may, at times, have two finalists who list the same party preference on their filing papers. The statement of a candidate’s party preference doesn’t mean the party endorses or supports the candidate in any way.

You can find the paperwork on our special Top 2 Litigation website – scroll down to find the 2010 stuff.