A House panel has passed a bill that might resolve the issue of whether the elections of Precinct Committee Officers can still be run by the state. PCOs are local Republican and Democratic Party leaders who run neighborhood precinct organizations and help fill office vacancies.

The issue surfaced last year when U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour ruled that Washington’s partisan PCO election system is unconstitutional since state voters switched to a nonpartisan Top 2 system. The judge wrote:

“Washington’s method of electing precinct committee officers is unconstitutional because it severely burdens the political parties’ ability to identify and associate with members of their respective parties. Precinct committee officers are grassroots representatives of the political parties, yet all voters, regardless of party affiliation, receive the same candidate ballot and have an opportunity to elect those officers. The political parties have a right to object to Washington’s method of determining party affiliation for these officers, and Washington has not shown that its interests in using this system outweigh the First Amendment’s special associational protections (11 JAN 2011, PG 24 Coughenhour Decision).”

Under the new version of House Bill 1860 that was OK’d by the House State Government and Tribal Affairs Committee Thursday night:
• PCO elections would be held at the August Primary Election in even-numbered years.
• If no one files for a PCO office, it will be filled by the parties.
• No write-in candidates are allowed.
• County Auditors may choose a consolidated or a physically separate ballot.
• A voter must check a box designating affiliation with a major party and may vote only for the PCO election of the party he or she affiliates with.
• A voter must check the box and vote for the party candidate associated with the affiliation selected in order for the vote to be counted.

Just before Christmas, the state Republican and Democratic parties went to court to ask that the state be ordered to continue running PCO elections. The case is set for a hearing in Thurston County Superior Court on March 23 at 9 a.m.

The parties also have asked the court to set aside new regulations by the Secretary of State’s Elections Division that ends the practice of PCO elections being included on the state Top 2 Primary ballot.

Washington voters don’t register by party. There currently are about 6,500 precincts throughout the state, so there potentially are about 13,000 PCO contests. Many of the positions go unfilled or have only one candidate.