Thursday, March 22, 2007

States Goin' Primary Crazy

In just the last two days, the New York Senate and Florida House of Representatives have voted to move their states' primaries to February 5th and January 29th, respectively (and they have promised to be approved by the other houses and governors). Many other states, including Texas, are considering similar moves. This makes the current schedule front-loaded beyond belief and it will likely just get worse:

January 14, 2008 - Iowa

January 19, 2008 - Nevada

January 22, 2008 - New Hampshire

January 29, 2008 - South Carolina, Florida

February 5, 2008 - Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Utah

While I detest Iowa's and New Hampshire's unbalanced role in the presidential nominating process, I'm not sure all this is a good idea either. We seem to be moving towards a near-national primary system - one that takes places nearly half a year before the nominating convention.

Oh well, this is what the DNC and RNC get for not demanding bigger changes.

1 comment:

Nat-Wu said...

Yes, the DNC should have taken control instead of letting people throw their hats in the ring willy-nilly. Now you have a bunch of early, early primaries that don't necessarily make sense.