Washington State is one of only two states with a Top 2 Primary system for elections (sometimes called a Jungle Primary).

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For many years, we’ve had many questions about Washington State’s Top 2 Primary (sometimes called a Jungle Primary) system for elections. As the first state to adopt this election system for primaries, and with only one other state using it (California), it is worth discussing. Hopefully people find this helpful and useful. Let me know if you think we missed anything here, and I recommend the links referenced below as helpful for additional research.


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Related Articles (And Background Sources):

(for those who want to exhaustively review every legal filing in the various lawsuits about the top2 primary, go here. Excellent source link to download the original legal documents. Very comprehensive. Great place to find contemporaneous arguments in favor and in opposition in the legal documents)

Historylink – a good summary of the 1934 Grange sponsored initiative

Historylink – A decent history of the primary election policy progression until 2004.

The Washington State Secretary of State’s office posted a brief summary of the history of the Top2 as a bullet-point synopsis, which can be helpful.

This is another brief explanation of the Top2 primary system on the Washington State Secretary of State’s website.

This is a downloadable document from the Secretary of State detailing some of the Top2 history – it is weak on early voting issues from the 1920s. If this link is deleted, you can also download it here.

This is the 2004 Washington State voter’s pamphlet, which is interesting both because it had the full pro/con statements about I-872 (Top2 Primary), and it was the year of the Rossi/Gregoire election debacle…

This is what Ballotpedia has to say about Initiative 872