The Spokesman-Review's Spin Control blog is reporting that elected precinct committee officers---party officials who determine who will lead their respective parties and nominate replacements when party members vacate legislative offices---can keep their seats for now, but that the parties will have to come up with a new way of electing PCOs in the future.

At issue is the state's top-two primary system, in which the top two candidates in the primary election move forward to the general election, regardless of party. PCOs have been elected under the top-two system despite the fact that they're party officials, not public officials.

Spin Control's Jim Camden writes:

The Top Two is an election in which the other candidates for partisan office merely state their party preference and the winners are not considered the nominees of their preferred parties. (Want to read the entire order? Click here.)

That's fine for other offices, because voters can reasonably understand that those candidates aren't necessarily members of, or endorsed by, the parties for which the list a preference, Coughenour said. But the PCOs are party officials, not really public officials and the parties have a right to expect that only party members elect party officials. There's no way to ensure that under the current system.

The upshot is that the political parties will have to figure out a way to elect PCOs in the future outside the top-two system.