Give Pierce County voters credit. They not only waded through a raft of sometimes-contradictory charter amendments on this year’s ballot, they did so with consistency.
Voters stripped three county offices of partisan allegiance, rejected attempts to limit their choices in county elections, and ensured minor party and independent candidates equal access to the ballot.
In other words, voters took every opportunity they had to repudiate party politics.
No longer will the assessor-treasurer and auditor wear party labels. It’s high time, too. Party politics has no place in the business of assessing property or conducting elections. Nor does partisanship have a place in law enforcement. Voters saw to it that when the sheriff becomes an elected position next year, it will be a non-partisan post.
Voters also saw through attempts to curtail a new voting system that gives them more freedom to vote their conscience without worrying about throwing their vote away on an unpopular candidate.
Pierce County voters made it abundantly clear last fall that they wanted to use ranked-choice voting to elect most county officeholders. On Tuesday, they restated their support, handily defeating charter amendments that would have delayed RCV two years and permanently limited ranking to the top three choices in each race.
(Voters were not unreasonable in their demand for RCV, acquiescing to a temporary delay in the ability to rank all candidates in each race while the county gets the right voting equipment.)
Tuesday’s final blow to old-time partisan politics — a charter amendment that eases the filing requirement for independent and minor party candidates — was a matter of such basic fairness that even representatives of the major political parties agreed with it.
Judging voter intent is, at best, an inexact science. But sometimes election outcomes have a symmetry that defies coincidence. Pierce County residents voted on seven charter amendments that had the power to change the political dynamic; they took every opportunity they had to break the two-party monopoly.
Next year’s election could be the true test of voter will. Independent candidates are already emerging to test ranked-choice voting. Only then will it be clear if voters really prefer less partisanship with their county government.
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