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It does help. I did know about the penalty for having the primary too early. I just couldn’t see spending the taxpayer money on a non-binding vote.

So, if the Pubbies have the caucus, then there is no penalty right?

Thanks for your help.

Thanks, Greeneyes... to the best of my knowledge the caucus avoids the Republican delegate penalty. My only hesitation in saying that is I've been told that by legislators and haven't verified it personally by checking, but I have no reason to believe I've been told wrong.

I don't want to give the impression that this is the way I routinely handle questions — I don't cover state government and my focus is local and county government, so I haven't had a reason until now to check. The political consensus seems to be that the beauty contest primary is a waste of money but not a major issue. I concur. If this were the worst waste of taxpayer money going on I wouldn't be too upset... not the biggest issue on my list of things to which I pay attention.

If you want me to do so, I will do some digging and post relevant links, or if for some reason I can't get the rationale online from primary sources, I will make some phone calls to verify facts. You've asked a question to which it would be helpful for me to know the answer with certainty and with primary source research, but until now nobody has asked me and I haven't yet needed to know for my own work.