Posted on 03/20/2011 11:36:24 AM PDT by Justaham
Skimpy budgets are cutting into the way U.S. states pay for schools, healthcare -- and now primary elections.
At least six states are considering either canceling or delaying their 2012 U.S. presidential primaries, mostly to save money by combining the vote with primaries for state offices.
None of this will likely have much effect on the Democratic presidential candidate, with President Barack Obama expected to seek re-election.
The biggest state considering a delay is California, where a bill has unanimously passed a State Assembly committee that would move the presidential primary from February to June, to coincide with its state and local primary.
"We'll save $100 million by eliminating the stand-alone presidential primary," said Democratic California Assemblyman Paul Fong, the bill's sponsor.
Fong believes the combined election will increase turn-out and fight voter fatigue. "Three major elections in one year is too much," Fong said.
Legislators in Missouri and Alabama have also proposed bills shifting their presidential primaries to June, combining them with state primaries. Washington and Kansas are considering skipping the presidential primaries altogether, allowing parties to pick candidates through caucuses. The idea of skipping the primary also came up during a Massachusetts budget hearing.
"The last presidential primary we had in our state -- the Republicans only used 50 percent of the results and the Democrats did not use the results at all," said Patty Murphy, voting systems specialist for the Washington Secretary of State. She said eliminating the primary could save the state $10 million.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Win-win.
Is there any reason why any state must hold a primary? It seems like it’s party business, not state business. Why don’t the parties have to pay the states to hold a primary? Or why don’t the parties hold it themselves.
Serious talk about doing this in Washington (State) in 2012...
Why don’t the feds just cancel the elections and allow our dear leader to re-appoint himself?
/sarc
So far this mainly seems to be liberal states. I have a feeling this may backfire on the politicians who engineer it. I suspect they are motivated less by concern for saving money than by hopes of blocking Tea Partiers or other outsiders from coming in without establishment approval and taking their well-hoarded power away from them.
Move Southern primaries UP. Stop letting the GOP have the north east pick our candidates.
Hold all presidential primaries on the same day. Enough of the existing primary b.s. process.
Abolish primaries and just have a good old, knock-’em dead convention fight to choose our nominee.
The GOP National should simply state that delegates from States with open, same-day registration primaries shall not be seated. Only delegates from states with prior voter registration and preferrably voter ID will be allowed to select the GOP Presidential candidate.
Let the ‘rats in the Northeast pound sand...
We’ve done well without modern primaries for decades.
Cancel them all, tell NH and Iowa to go F themselves and their inflated egos, and let the conventions chose their party nominees.
Good questions...
I agree with this change. I live in Illinois, and all of the IL 2012 primaries will be held in March. Before I came to IL, I lived in California. All CA 2012 primaries will be held in June.
LOL! Good. By the time I got to vote I had one choice....John McCain. Screw that. Those little pissant states that we could drop into a lake here in the mid-west can KMA. (Flame suit on)
Defund all collectives. In other words quit spending other people’s money. There will then be LESS NEED FOR SPEND AND TAX legislators. They can then be part-time with THEIR PERKS CUT OUT COMPLETELY and THEIR SALARIES AND BENEFITS CUT IN HALF.
This is a good first step. Why should taxpayers be paying for a mechanism for political parties to select their candidates?
Let’s defund primaries completely. Let the political parties pay for caucuses.
You all must see that without our being able to vote in anti establishment, anti RINO tea party candidates, and if we had let the GOP pick its own candidates in 2010, there would not be one tea party or very conservative candidate in those races.
Not one. Are you all comfortable with that?
Change dates and change the open primaries certainly, but when the grass roots loses the power to vote, then every candidate would be another McCain.
At best. - THINK.
Combining, thus expanding the quantity of issues normally spread across a couple of elections into one increases confusion, thus increases susceptibility to influence of Leftist propaganda.
I see this as another dirty Liberal voter intimidation style of trick.
You’re making the assumption that Tea Party people won’t be involved at all in choosing a presidential candidate at the state level.
I’ve never been involved in Republican party matters here in the state of Washington. But we move to using just the caucus format — just try and bar the door to keep me out! The Tea Party will storm the Republican’s attempts to keep anyone else out.
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