I Declare!

So, the Washington state Presidential primary is coming up, and ballots have been arriving in the mail.

I'm not a partisan, and so I've been debating whether or not to participate, because the parties are requiring a declaration of party. In any event, I checked the ballot, and on the return envelope are the party declaration statements. What I hadn't expected is that the verbiage is different for each one. To wit:

Democratic Party:

I declare that my party preference is the Democratic Party and I will not participate in the nomination process of any other political party for the 2020 Presidential Election.

Republican Party:

I declare that I am a Republican and I have not participated and will not participate in the 2020 precinct caucus or convention system of any other party.

I suppose that I shouldn't have been surprised that the parties themselves had written these declarations, and therefore, they're worded differently from one another, but I had expected simply checkboxes with the party names next to them.

This is the first time that both parties are using the primary to select candidates at the state level. Previously, the Democrats used a caucus, and the primary was simply an afterthought, and I hadn't really paid any attention to the process as a whole. And given how late it was in the overall primary season, neither had anyone else.

In any event, it's an interesting piece of trivia. The actual election isn't for another two weeks. We'll see if it produces anything interesting this time around.