Camden: Awarding most memorable political moments of 2016

The Bronzed Old Chestnut Medallion, for a bad idea that keeps coming back: to the proposed legislation to split Washington into two states, a half-baked proposal with at least 100 years of history being introduced and an equal amount of time of not happening. Giant suckers to be presented at the awards ceremony for television news accounts that treated this like a serious idea that has a chance of creating a 51st state.

The Benedick and Beatrice Loving Cup, named for the characters in “Much Ado About Nothing”: to the Hamilton Electors movement that tried to get members of the Electoral College to vote for someone other than Trump and throw the presidential election into the House of Representatives. They even went to federal court trying to avoid the penalty in Washington law for doing that. Unfortunately for the “movement,” the three electors in Washington who voted for Colin Powell took votes from Hillary Clinton. In Texas, Trump lost a vote to John Kasich and one to Ron Paul, but those are secret ballots, so it’s unclear if they were actual Hamilton Electors. The biggest impact of the protest movement will be to add asterisks to the 2016 Electoral College tabulation … and possibly a fine for Washington electors who broke their pledge to support their party’s nominee.

The Golden Buggy Whip, for the most anachronistic element of the campaign season: to the Washington precinct caucus system. Both parties held them, with Republicans using them to start a process that selected national delegates before the presidential primary was held, so Ted Cruz delegates wound up pledged to Trump. The Democrats ignored the primary results, which favored Clinton, so many of their delegates supported Sanders, who won the caucuses.

A supersized Smiley Face Certificate, for the most optimistic interpretation of bad results: to the Bill Bryant for Governor campaign and its creative math in interpreting the results of the state primary. Although Bryant trailed incumbent Jay Inslee by some 10 percentage points in the primary, the campaign said that should be seen as down to only about 4 points by adding in the votes of the other Republican, Bill Hirt, because after all, they have the same first name. And keeping an incumbent under 50 percent historically signaled trouble for said incumbent, they opined. A check of elections going back 60 years says there’s no such pattern; the more likely indicator of success in the general is coming out on top in the primary. Which happened in 2016.