OLYMPIA, Wash. (AP) _ Washington state's penchant for voting for the candidate instead of the party has a new lease on life.

Under a surprise 7-2 ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, the state is allowed to begin using a primary that would put all candidates on the same ballot and advance the top two finishers to the general election, regardless of party.

The first such primary is set for Aug. 19, when voters will pick finalists for governor, Congress, the judiciary and Legislature.

Gov. Chris Gregoire, a Democrat who defied her party to back the wide-open style of voting that welcomes independents, called it "a new day for democracy in Washington state."

Washington voters approved the system in 2004 after the high court struck down the state's time-honored and popular "blanket" primary. That system — in which all candidates appeared on the same ballot, with the top finisher from each party advancing to the general election — was thrown out in 2000 when the court ruled that California's similar primary was an unconstitutional intrusion on parties' right to choose their nominees.

The blanket primary dated to the 1930s and allowed crossover voting — a Democrat for governor, for instance, a Republican for Congress, a Green Party candidate for the Legislature.

But in Tuesday's ruling, the court said the "top two" system isn't a nominating process, picking one Democrat and one Republican for the finals, but rather a winnowing, qualifying election.

Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas said that overturning Washington's plan would have been an "extraordinary and precipitous nullification of the will of the people."

In dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said Washington's system would cause a political party to be associated with candidates who may not represent its views.

The Washington Grange, the populist farm advocacy group that sponsored the original blanket primary and pushed the ballot initiative that created the "top two" plan, was thrilled by the decision.

"It shows that elections belong to the people, not to the parties," said Terry Hunt, the group's government affairs manager. "It means the world to voters."

Analysts said the system should favor centrists with crossover appeal over hard-edged partisans. The new method also offers the intriguing possibility of November elections between two candidates from the same party.

Had the system been in place in 1996, for instance, the governor's race would have been between two Democrats, Gary Locke and Norm Rice, because both received more votes than conservative Republican Ellen Craswell in the primary. A state Senate race in central Washington's Yakima Valley last fall would have had two Republican finalists.

The "top two" system, patterned loosely after Louisiana's system, could begin spreading to other states with the green light from the high court, said a jubilant Secretary of State Sam Reed.

"I think it could sweep the nation, and will probably start in the West, probably by way of initiative in Oregon and California, out here where reforms have been so popular in the past century," Reed said in an interview.