Should we pay to elect PCOs?

By Evan Smith
ShorelineAreaNews
Politics writer

A Seattle Times columnist raised this question a few months ago:

Should our state and county governments pay for election of precinct committee officers for the state’s major political parties?

Every two years, our ballots include elections for PCOs in hundreds of precincts around King County. Printing and counting the ballots is expensive.

Yet while each city, school district and special-purpose district pays its share of the cost of the election, the parties don’t.

The argument for stopping the practice is that the county shouldn’t subsidize the parties. The counter-argument is that it gives voters influence over the parties.

When people in my neighborhood were unhappy with the local Democratic committee last year, they supported a challenger for the PCO position held by a district Democratic officer.

When we pick those PCOs, we are picking people who do more than influence party policy. When the August primary for a seat on the Edmonds City Council went to a hand recount, local Democrats and Republicans supplied the people who counted the nearly 9,000 ballots.

Evan Smith can be reached at schsmith@verizon.net.