— by Diane Martindale —
You may be perplexed over what Washington’s May 24 Democratic Presidential Primary means, especially if you participated in the March 26 Democratic precinct caucuses. But I encourage you to vote!
The media will report the results of the Washington State Republican primary on May 24, as they use the primary results to assign delegates to their national convention.
Even though your vote will not determine Democratic convention delegates, that was done via the precinct caucuses, most people, especially those outside Washington will not know this. We want the rest of the United States to know that we DO vote. In fact, our county historically has the highest voter turnout in Washington in presidential election years.
Although turnout was remarkable at the March 24 Democratic precinct caucuses, the great majority of Democratic voters in our county did not participate for a variety of reasons. The primary in which we vote by mail, is a secret ballot and is available to all, whether they did attend precinct caucuses or not.
Don’t pass up this opportunity to be counted in this much more broad-based referendum on your preferred presidential candidate.
If you have questions, call the San Juan County Elections Office at 378-3357.
Diane Martindale is the San Juan County for Hillary coordinator
One has to seriously question the value of voting in either the caucus or this primary when the so-called Superdelegates from the State of Washington completely ignore the overwhelming vote for Bernie Sanders and instead support Hilary Clinton, effectively disenfranchising the great majority of voters who participated as far as allocation of Superdelegates, a pattern sadly repeated across the country. The Democratic party has a lot to answer for with this clearly “undemocratic” situation.
Can anybody confirm or deny that our personal information is passed on to the political parties? I read an article in the mainstream press last week (sorry, no link available) that stated that our name and mailing address and the party we voted for, but not who we actually voted for, is passed on. This strikes me as completely inappropriate.
This is exactly why we need to change our whole election system. No more electoral college, definitely no more superdelegates who ignore the vote of the people. I was so angry hearing our own governor & superdelegate stating he would vote for Hilary! No wonder so many people feel their vote doesn’t count and don’t even bother voting. It’s sad for a country that’s supposed to be for the people when “the people” are ignored and superdelegates do whatever they want. And, of course, we also need to add term limits to congress. It’s also sad that the corporate-owned media give most of their attention to Trump and Clinton, leaving Sanders out for the most part like he doesn’t even exist. Hopefully all of this will change in the near future!