Hillary Could Benefit From Potential Primary-Date Changes In Three States
Three states are gaining ground in their efforts to move up their Presidential primaries -- moves which could bestow big benefits on well-funded Presidential candidates like Hillary Clinton, today's Boston Globe reports:
Political leaders in California, Florida, and Michigan are gaining momentum in their efforts to move up the 2008 presidential primaries in their states to shortly after New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary, which could lead some candidates to focus less attention on the Granite State and trigger a dramatic increase in the cost of early campaigning.The three states are not expected to trump a New Hampshire law that requires it to hold the nation's first primary one week before any other state. But political leaders in the three states have indicated they want to move up their primary dates as close as possible to New Hampshire's vote, tentatively scheduled for Jan. 22.
That has alarmed Democratic Party leaders, who have worked to protect New Hampshire's prominence and provide powerful roles for early caucuses in Iowa and Nevada, and the nation's second primary, in South Carolina...
Campaigning in California, Florida, and Michigan, by contrast, would be extraordinarily expensive, which could benefit well-financed front-runners such as Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona and Democratic Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. That is a sensitive topic at the DNC, which is chaired by Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and presidential contender who sought the 2004 nomination with a grass-roots effort.
The argument for moving up those primaries is that these states have a size and diversity which provide an early and realistic test of candidates. But the DNC, which is concerned that "frontloading" the primaries with big state contests could work against lesser-funded candidates, prefers a different approach.
The DNC wants to offset the influence of Iowa and New Hampshire by giving prominence to Nevada and South Carolina as counterweights -- states far cheaper to campaign in than Florida, California, or Michigan. DNC leaders will be hashing out the issue in December, partly by considering an approach which would award states agreeing to hold later primaries with "bonus delegates." Read the Globe's full rundown here. Via the Just Hillary blog.
In grade school kids named Bob Zip or Joe Yip get mad when time after time the teacher calls the kids for this or that activity alphabetically. Smart teachers learn to rotate their lists, going Z-A once in awhile. Really smart teachers learn to split the list and rotate both halves, say A-M and N-Z. Then Andy Aap, Molly Map, Nora Nap and the whole gang are all favored on some occaisions, the end result being a more fair system.
The fact that Andy and Alice Aap New Hampshire and Iowa cry loudly when any changes that promote fairness for the other kids states are proposed suggests they lack the maturity to be leading the process. California and Florida also don't want a fair process, they just want to cut in line because they are bigger than the other kids. That's called bullying, not leadership.
There are several voting plans that would provide fairness and a balance between the size of state populations in the election season. Congress should pick one plan and tie funding of elections to that plan. If they can do it with HAVA, they can do it with a schedule. This quadrennial bitching is as tiresome as it is counterproductive. Our country has real problems that aren't all solved by sucking up to the freaking New Hampshire Secretary of State.
November 25, 2006 3:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
I like the plan to which you linked; however, it does suck up to the NH SoS at least to some extent:
"Iowa and New Hampshire would retain their leading positions in the presidential selection process based upon their tradition of encouraging retail politics."
Here's my plan: a competitive system that awards first-in-the-nation status to the states with the highest rates of participation in the previous general elections.
Neither NH nor IA would be in the lead right now under this system. Instead, it would be 1. Minnesota, 2. Maine, 3. Wisconsin, 4. New Hampshire, 5. (tie) Oregon, Alaska, and South Dakota, 8. Iowa, 9. Vermont. But IA and NH would have a fighting chance to keep their status if they rally their citizenry to the highest rates of participation.
This system would encourage a race to the top and bipartisan efforts to increase voter turnout. The first caucuses/primaries would also likely remain in smaller population states, as they lead the list of states with the highest participation rates (the lowest turnout in the 2004 general election was in Hawaii, then Texas, then California).
It would also be possible to choose the best performing states from each reason in order to limit the number of upper midwest, northwest, or new england states up front (since they have historically had the highest participation rates).
The sunny states have a lot of catching up to do under my formula, but they also have an incentive to do so.
Map of turnout by % of voting age population (note reversal of red/blue color scheme):
http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/data.php?year=2004&datatype=national&def=vto&f=1&off=0&elect=0
November 27, 2006 9:02 PM | Reply | Permalink