Missouri Senate Bill on Presidential Primary Passes Committee Stage in State House

The Missouri Senate bill that would move the Show Me state presidential primary from February to March has gotten the thumbs up from both the House Committee on Elections and the House Rules Committee.

A bill with the exact same language has already passed the House and is currently being considered in the state Senate. SB 892 passed the Senate with only a handful of dissenting votes earlier this month. This clears the way for the bill to be considered on the floor of the state House, first through an amendment process and through a final vote.

The legislation would shift Missouri back into compliance with the national party rules on delegate selection. This follows a cycle when Missouri Republicans had to allocate delegates via a later [March] caucus/convention process while the February -- state-funded -- primary was a mere beauty contest. Missouri Democrats received a waiver from the DNC to continue with (an uncompetitive) presidential primary on the February date.

The Missouri General Assembly will be in session until May 16.

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Utah Presidential Primary in 2016, Prologue or Epilogue

FHQ is late to this but I did want to point readers in the direction of a nice summary piece on the recent effort in Utah to move the presidential primary in the state online and ahead of the carve-out states.

More interesting, perhaps, is the brief bit on where legislators or the parties in Utah may turn next, now that the move to challenge Iowa and New Hampshire has passed:

Utah Republicans are working with their counterparts in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona to put together a regional primary that would be held between March 15 and April 1, Hough said.

This is noteworthy on the heels of news that there is an effort underway among a series of southern states to have a southern regional primary at the beginning of March. But such a western regional primary would be susceptible to some of the same issues that would face a southern primary. Mostly, that it is potentially difficult to coordinate. Still, it looks at though Utah is unlikely to wait until June to conduct its presidential primary in 2016. The rest? We'll have to wait until 2015 to see about them.

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Missouri Senate Passes Bill Moving Presidential Primary to March

Earlier, the Missouri Senate voted 25-7 to pass SB 892. This is the bill that would shift the Show Me state presidential primary from February to March and into compliance with national party delegate selection rules.¹

The Senate bill now moves to the House where an identical bill has already been passed. Each chamber is dealing with the other's (exact same) version of the legislation. Having already passed, each should move smoothly through the respective chambers.

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Additional background:
The description of the bill on the Senate floor for a procedural vote on April 9 by its sponsor, Senator Will Kraus (R-8th) describes the reasoning behind the proposed March position on the calendar. A June date was considered but rejected as too late.² And the original April proposal faced opposition from elections administrators because of logistical issues (e.g.: combining partisan and non-partisan races on one ballot, requiring two different machines). Not mentioned was the fact that this particular date in March will preserve the winner-take-all delegate allocation method Missouri Republicans have traditionally used. New RNC rules prohibit winner-take-all allocation of delegates before that point on the calendar.

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UPDATE:
The 25-7 vote split largely on party lines. Seven of the nine Democrats in the Senate opposed the measure. The majority Republicans were unified in support of moving the primary from February to March.

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¹ The specific move is from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in February to the first Tuesday after the second Monday in March. That would be a move from February 6 to March 15 for the 2016 cycle.

² Presumably a June presidential primary would have been consolidated with primaries for state and local office as well. Separate legislation is seeking to shift the current August primary for state and local offices up to June.

 Recent Posts:
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Nebraska Bill on Binding Delegates Based on Primary or Caucus Results Signed into Law

When FHQ discussed Nebraska bill LB 1048 back in February, talk was that an amendment would be added to the legislation. That amendment would have had the effect of shifting the presidential primary in the Cornhusker state out of May and to an earlier point on the presidential primary calendar. Yet, that particular amendment never came.

However, LB 1048 unanimously passed the Nebraska Unicam late last week and was signed into law by Governor Dave Heinemann (R) on Wednesday, April 9.  

From February, here's the impact of the bill for the presidential nomination process in Nebraska in 2016:

1. State parties have to submit delegate selection plans to the Nebraska Secretary of State by December 1 in the year prior to the presidential election.
2. Those plans should allocate at least 80% of the total number of delegates to candidates based on the results of a primary or caucuses.
3. The plans must also specify how or if those delegates would be bound to particular candidates.
4. Finally, those plans must also set a minimum threshold of 15% in the primary for a candidate to eligible for any delegates whether allocated proportionally or in a winner-take-all manner.

At its core, the new law requires that the state parties bind at least 80% of their delegates to candidates based on either the state-funded presidential primary election or presumably the first step of a party-funded caucus process (the precinct caucuses). Nebraska Democrats are already compliant, having done this the last two cycles through a caucuses/convention process.

The above changes to the law will be more consequential to Republican Conrnhuskers. The primary has always been used as an advisory beauty contest and the beginning stages of the caucus process had no direct bearing on the selection of delegates. A certain number of delegates for a particular candidate did not have to be elected in a precinct based on the percentage of the vote that candidate received there. The only restrictions were 1) that potential delegates to the national convention had to file with the state and party (with a candidate preference) just after the primary and 2) only credentialed delegates to the state convention were eligible.

There was, however, no binding mechanism. Now there is. And it was consistent with the DNC delegate selection rules and with the new binding requirement that the RNC has added to its rules for 2016.

Recent Posts:
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Missouri Presidential Primary Bill Clears Procedural Hurdle in Senate

The Missouri state Senate voted on April 8 to finalize -- perfect -- its version of a bill to move the Show Me state presidential primary from February to March. The bill that is identical to a previously passed House bill will now be considered one final time on the floor of the Senate before a recorded vote on passage.

The House version is currently being considered in the state Senate. Both bills would shift the Missouri presidential primary into March and into compliance with the RNC rules (and likely DNC rules) on delegate selection for the 2016 cycle.

Recent Posts:
A Step Closer to a March Presidential Primary in Missouri

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