Weeks after he testified in the Senate on a bill to suspend our state’s Presidential Primary in 2012, Secretary Reed appeared before the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee to urge it to approve the House version of the prez primary proposal.

Suspending the Presidential Primary next year would save the state $10 million at a time when the Legislature faces a $4-billion-plus budget deficit.

The proposal includes language that makes sure the state’s Presidential Primary resumes in 2016.

Secretary Reed has told legislators and others that he does not want to suspend our state’s Presidential Primary. In fact, he has been a strong supporter since its creation in 1989. But he’s said the state’s budget crisis is dire enough to warrant putting the prez primary on hold, pointing out that the Office of Secretary of State’s Elections Division has already undergone numerous cuts, going from 21 General Fund positions in 2008 to only 11 positions now.

For those wondering, the Presidential Primary is different than Washington’s popular Top 2 Primary, which was created through a voter initiative in 2004 and implemented in August 2008 after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld it that March. Washington’s Presidential Primary, which was last held in February 2008, requires voters to request either a Democratic or Republican ballot. The state parties have not embraced the Presidential Primary as a way to select their presidential nominees. In ’08, the state GOP used the prez primary results to select only half of its delegates for the national Republican convention, and the state Democrats have never used the primary results to select their delegates.

The Senate version, SB 5119, was passed by the Senate elections panel weeks ago and is now before the Senate Ways and Means Committee.