IN HIS BLACK SUIT and blue-striped power tie, Joe Fain looks the perfect political operative, a polished persuader who would be as at home on Washington, DC’s, K Street as here in the eighth-floor cafeteria of the Washington Athletic Club. He speaks in clear, concise sound bites. He is chief of staff for King County Council member Pete von Reichbauer, a Republican. And he is the driving force behind an initiative that could oust political parties from county government.

“It all comes down to voter choice,” Fain says, as his BlackBerry hums with a call. “This idea of signing an oath…of not being able to have influence in an election because you have to choose a party…” he trails off, then exclaims incredulously, “We are an independent and well-informed electorate!” How could they do this to us?

Fain is talking about Washington’s recently instituted “pick-a-party” primary scheme, under which each voter must designate a party affiliation and choose only candidates contending for that party’s nominations. In last February’s presidential primary, 22 percent of all King County ballots were not counted because voters—for whatever reason—failed to swear affiliation by checking a tiny box. Defenders of the scheme say voters were just confused by this unfamiliar requirement. Joe Fain calls it disenfranchisement.

The U.S. Supreme Court offered a little relief for Fain’s disenfranchised masses in March, when it upheld Washington’s controversial voter-adopted “top two” primary for state, local, and congressional races. This will let voters choose freely from various rosters, without regard to party affiliation. We’ll see this new system on the ballot next month in the primary elections, but Fain expects further challenges from party leaders.

So he offers another solution, or revolution, at least at the local level: King County Initiative 26 would make the county executive, assessor, and council all nonpartisan. The concept is nothing new; this is the fifth time (the first was in 1952) it’s been pushed. Corruption scandals made the idea attractive in the 1960s, and then–County Council members Greg Nickels and Dwight Pelz (both Democrats) sought to revive it in 1991 and 1999, respectively.

"It all comes down to voter choice." —Joe Fain, King County Council member Pete von Reichbauer

Fast forward to the wee hours of March 31, 2008: a one-bedroom apartment with a couch, two chairs, a tiny table with a TV, and 4,659 methodically stacked papers blanketing the carpet. These were the petitions Joe Fain had to wheel down to the county clerk’s office that day. With 80,000 signatures turned in, Fain and his supporters—including more than 25 local elected officials and an association representing 37 suburban cities in King County—had easily garnered the 52,817 valid signatures required to put I-26 before voters.

Fain and friends contend that going nonpartisan would boost competition in elections, accountability in government, and relationships with cities, sewer districts, and other nonpartisan local governments. “It’s the difference of us having to work for the best result versus having to work for the best result of the party platform,” says Auburn Mayor Pete Lewis. He regularly works with King County’s partisan officials on roads, flood control, and other services. When they have to check their ideas against party platforms, Lewis says, it slows the process.

Fain recalls how green-minded Democrats and Republican property—rights advocates collided in 2004, all but killing any compromise on King County’s Critical Areas Ordinance. Seven Democratic council members finally passed the controversial plan for restricting rural development over the nays of six Republicans. In response, pickup-driving protesters, loaded to the gunwales with horses and hay bales, clogged traffic in downtown Seattle.

But not everybody wants to crash the parties. I-26 draws fire from both Republican and Democrat leaders—including current state Democratic chair Dwight Pelz, who as a council member urged going nonpartisan in 1999. They and other opponents argue that the initiative is misguided and unnecessary.

County Council member Larry Gossett, a Democrat, foresees neither benefit nor harm from taking party allegiance off the ballot: “I don’t see how anybody could make a case that not knowing if [candidates are] Republican or Democrat makes one iota of difference.” But he’s one of eight council members opposing I-26. “I believe that the general population in Martin Luther King County has been served well, so if something is not broken, why would somebody clamor for a fix?”

"If something is not broken, why would someone clamor for a fix?" —Larry Gossett, Member, King County Council

One reason, Fain and Lewis argue, is to get more candidates in the mix. In the 1999 primaries, 22 candidates competed for five nonpartisan Seattle City Council seats while only nine vied for six available seats on the partisan County Council. In 2003 it was a similar story, and in 2005 only five new candidates sought county seats even though all nine were up for vote.

Other opponents of I-26 complain that removing party labels would just let candidates hide their true colors—in effect, help Republicans shed their scarlet R and survive in an increasingly Democratic county. That last charge hits especially at Fain’s boss, Council member Pete von Reichbauer, who has switched his partisan stripes before, earning enduring suspicion among local Democrats. In 1981, von Reichbauer, then a Democratic state senator, switched affiliation, transferring a one-vote Senate majority to the Republicans.

To Democratic Council member Dow Constantine, removing party labels is like buying soup in unlabeled cans: “I know I’m getting soup but I’m not sure if I’m going to get soup that I like.” For example, “only some voters are made aware of the Seattle City Council candidates’ party affiliation, whereas in the King County Council scenario every voter gets to see the party affiliation of the candidates for whom they’re voting because it’s printed on the ballot.”

Those who see I-26 as a GOP camouflage stratagem point to its funding as evidence. State records show that $185,000 of the $233,165 donated as of March 31 to Citizens for Independent Government (Fain’s group promoting the initiative) came from four prominent businesspeople—John Stanton, Theresa Gillespie, George Rowley, and John Hennessy—who have often given to conservative causes and Republican candidates.

Pay no attention to party affiliation, Initiative 26’s backers urge. Follow the money, counter its opponents. Voters will decide which advice to take when I-26 appears (in nonpartisan form) on the August 19 ballot.