Voter's Guide

Let's see if I've gotten this right - the current slam against Obama is that he's too POPULAR to be president?

In the meantime, my life has been enriched by the Voter's Guide for the upcoming Washington State Primary in two weeks. We have new system in place this time, the "Top Two" primary, which is to supposedly correct a problem that didn't really exist and in fact doesn't even do that. I've ranted about this before and (you guessed it) I'm going to rant about again.

The concept of the Top Two is that we have a completely open primary, from which the top two winners for each position go onto the general election. This form of primary is not unique in the US, as it is used in Louisiana, that bastion of free and fair political processes. Indeed, we're using a process that gave the world David Duke. Good Game, Guys!

What this means in real life is that if you like the Greens, Reforms, Libertarians, or any of the other parties in the system, you'd better pay attention now because you won't see any of them come election time. For most partisan positions, the two majors have already gotten their candidates up and running. For the non-partisan posts, well, things get murky fast.

That's where Grubb Street comes in. As public service, I'm going to be separating the wheat from the chaff, and printing the chaff. But its going to be very inciteful chaff, as I and the rest of you muddle through this mess we call the 2008 state primaries.

Buckle in, it's going to be a rocky ride.

More later,