Showing posts with label primary bills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label primary bills. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 18, 2023

It is tough to move the Pennsylvania presidential primary

Invisible Primary: Visible -- Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

First, over at FHQ Plus...
  • The DNC has quietly had a pretty interesting conversation about ranked choice voting in the presidential nomination process this cycle. Not much is going to change on the surface for 2024 -- RCV will have the same basic footprint as in 2020 -- but there have been some important changes under the hood that bring the practice more in line with DNC rules. All the details at FHQ Plus.
  • I included the wrong link to the DNCRBC meeting recap yesterday. You can find that deep dive here if you missed it.
If you haven't checked out FHQ Plus yet, then what are you waiting for? Subscribe below for free and consider a paid subscription to support FHQ's work and unlock the full site.


In Invisible Primary: Visible today...
Despite a flurry of legislative activity over the last month and a half, an inter-chamber impasse played a role in derailing the effort to shift the presidential primary in the Keystone state up to an earlier and potentially more influential date. 

It is not a new story. It is not even really a partisan story. Yes, Republicans control the Pennsylvania state Senate and Democrats have the narrowest of majorities in the lower chamber. However, Democrats in the Senate largely supported the effort to move the primary from the fourth Tuesday in April to the third Tuesday in March (March 19). House Democrats countered with a bill that would have shifted the primary to April 2, in line with primaries in several other regional/neighboring states.

But part of the impetus behind the change in the first place was to fix the conflict the presidential primary had with the observance of Passover. The Senate version did that and the House version did too. However, the latter legislation would have had the primary butting up against Easter weekend. And as consideration of the primary move stretched into the fall, election administrators across Pennsylvania got antsy about their preparations for the next election cycle after the current one ends. And that does not even mention some of the other elections-related riders that made it into the House-amended version of the Senate bill when it originally came before the body earlier in October. 

Basically, the effort got mired in the legislative process. And even though the House struck the entirety of the previous version of the Senate-passed bill, replacing it with only one provision calling for the primary to shift up a week to April 16 to clear the Passover conflict (and passing it), the Senate does not seem inclined to take up the measure. 


Look, there was a lot involved in this Pennsylvania process this year. There is not just one explanation for why the primary in the commonwealth will once again be scheduled for the fourth Tuesday in April. But it is worth noting that Pennsylvania has nearly always held down that position on the presidential primary calendar. Only twice has the primary strayed from that spot. And both the 1984 and 2000 primaries were only marginally earlier in April. 

Why? 

Unlike other states in the immediate aftermath of the Democratic Party rules changes that ushered in reforms to the nomination system, the reaction in Pennsylvania was more muted. Ahead of 1972, the state already had a primary well-enough in advance of a summer national convention. In other words, a presidential primary to allocate and select delegates could easily be consolidated with that spring primary. And it was. 

But in other states, especially those with late summer and early fall primaries for other offices, that was not an option. Decision makers in those states had to either uproot that primary and schedule it alongside a new presidential primary or create and fund a separate presidential primary election. Many took the latter route and normalized the expenditure in the state budget. 

Back in Pennsylvania, the consolidated primary left decision makers there in much the same dilemma as those early post-reform actors in other states anytime a push to reschedule the presidential primary in the Keystone state arose. Only, more often than not, the thinking in Pennsylvania was not to create and fund a separate election but to move everything up to an earlier date, dates that would place the filing process in the previous year and conflict with the conclusion of the previous off-year elections. 

That is why Pennsylvania barely moved the two times since 1972 that the primary date has been changed. That, in turn, has meant that a separate primary never got normalized nor did the practice of revisiting the date on a regular basis. Very simply, the concept was foreign to legislators in the state. It still is: 
[Rep. Arvind] Venkat also said moving the presidential primary on a year-by-year basis could be subject to the whim of the party in control of the legislature depending on whether it would be beneficial.

“The only pathway forward if we are going to move our primary is to change the election code on a permanent basis,” Venkat said.
So yes, many of the above stories about partisan squabbles or inter-chamber impasses or poison pill riders or election administrator pushback will get woven into the narrative on this non-move. But there is an institutional story too. The consolidated primary -- one that has nearly always been where it is -- is almost set in stone and there has not been much appetite to change that over the years. There has been some. It almost always comes up in the years before a presidential election year, but it also almost always goes nowhere. 

...and fast. The hurdles are too steep.


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From around the invisible primary...


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Sunday, May 14, 2023

Sunday Series: An Update on 2024 Presidential Primary Movement

Back in March, FHQ had an initial glimpse at early legislation to move, establish or eliminate state-run presidential primary elections for the 2024 cycle. And the picture then was one of a fairly sleepy cycle for movers and shakers on the 2024 presidential primary calendar. In the two months since, things have changed, but the story has basically stayed the same. 


First of all, 2023 looks a lot like the other years immediately prior to a presidential election year during the 21st century. That is the year -- the legislative session -- in the cycle that sees the most activity. To most state legislators, there is more, or has proven to be more, urgency to establish and/or position state-run (and funded) contests at that point than at any other time. It is on their radars. 

The 2023 legislative session has not strayed from that trend, but two months further on into it, the activity has not necessarily remained sleepy. In fact, there are now more bills that have been introduced in state legislatures across the country to schedule or reschedule presidential primaries for 2024 than there were in all of 2019 ahead of the competitive Democratic presidential nomination race. Part of the reason for that is partisan. Despite Democratic gains in state legislatures in the 2018 midterm cycle, Republicans continued to control the bulk of state legislatures in 2019. Presidential primary positioning may have been on the minds of Republican majorities in state legislatures, but it was not the priority to them that it would have been to Democratic legislators. 

However, even with fewer bills introduced overall, 2019 saw a higher success rate -- primary scheduling bills signed into law -- than the 2023 session has seen to this point. Yes, more and more state legislatures are adjourning their regular sessions for the year, but 2023 is still young. Primary bills have passed and been signed into law in four states as of mid-May: Idaho, Kansas, Maryland and Michigan. But there are more in the pipeline that look poised to pass (Connecticut, Rhode Island) and others where legislation is likely to eventually move (Pennsylvania) or be introduced in the first place (New Jersey, New York).

And that particular subset of states -- those in the northeast and mid-Atlantic -- are all signaling (or potentially signaling) an alignment that will have some impact on the overall calendar. Most of those states have in recent cycles occupied spots on the calendar in late April. Yet, with Passover falling in that window in 2024, legislators in some of those states are looking at a point a little earlier in the calendar: April 2. If Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island all join Wisconsin on that first Tuesday in April, then it will likely serve as the backside bookend of the delegate sweet spot on the calendar. All at once, the winner-take-all window will open in the Republican process on March 19 and the number of delegates allocated will hit 50 percent and then 75 percent in quick succession by April 2.1 And that would trigger the 50-75 rule that has so often been a guide to when Republican nomination races of the recent past have signaled the presumptive nominee. 

But all of that depends to some degree on what happens in that group of northeastern/mid-Atlantic states. Legislators actually have to do the hard work of legislating. And as both Idaho and Missouri have proven already in 2023, that endeavor is easier said than done. Regular sessions have ended in both states and neither has a state-run presidential primary option for 2024. Idaho eliminated their stand-alone March presidential primary and Missouri failed to reestablish their own. Yet, the door is not completely closed on either state. Revived pushes for a presidential primary option may come up in special sessions should they be called. That not only raises the possibility of primaries coming back, but also more bills to be added to the mix above both in terms of the overall number of primary bills and the success rate as well. 

Finally, note that none of the bills discussed or hinted at thus far are in any way threatening the beginning of the calendar. That is significant. Yes, that Michigan bill that was signed into law shifted the presidential primary in the Great Lakes state into the early window in the Democratic process, but that will have limited impact on how the beginning of the 2024 presidential primary calendar shakes out during the rest of 2023. Iowa Democrats appear to have found a way out of the penalties trap and New Hampshire continues to indicate its intention to go rogue, but how far into January Iowa Republicans and New Hampshire end up depends on what Nevada Republicans opt to do (and to a lesser extent how South Carolina Republicans react to that).

Many wondered aloud whether the Democratic National Committee decision to shuffle the primary calendar would set off a rush to the beginning of the calendar like in 2008. It has not. However, that decision has increased the level of uncertainty about the early part of the calendar. But the South Carolina Democratic primary being scheduled on February 3 means that there is a pretty narrow range of possibilities for the remaining undecided early states on the Republican side of the ledger. The big thing about the early calendar to internalize at this point is that neither Iowa nor New Hampshire are scheduled for early February. They never have been and will not be from the look of things at this point in 2023.


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1 A reminder: Just because the Republican winner-take-all window opens on March 15 does not mean that every state after that point will use winner-take-all rules. It just means that they all will have that option. 


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Saturday, April 15, 2023

From FHQ Plus: The Blurred Lines Between State and Party on the Caucuses in Iowa

The following is a cross-posted excerpt from FHQ Plus, FHQ's new subscription service. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to support our work. 

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I dealt with part of the new bill to change the parameters of the caucus process in the Hawkeye state over at FHQ earlier today. But that bill — HSB 245 — moved past its first obstacle today and out of the Study Bill Subcommittee of the Iowa House Ways and Means Committee on a 3-2 vote, and it looks like it will face a full committee vote on Thursday. [NOTE: HSB 245 passed Ways and Means on a party line vote on Thursday, April 13.]

As some have noted the effort to require in-person participation at a caucus — to ban a proposed plan by Iowa Democrats to shift to a vote-by-mail process — is a move that would immediately be on shaky legal ground. Parties have wide latitude in setting the rules of their internal processes under Supreme Court precedent. And the caucuses are a party affair. The parties pay for them. The parties set the rules. The parties run them.

But the Iowa caucus operations have often blurred the line between state and party on the matter. The parties and the state government, regardless of partisan affiliation across either, have tended to work together to protect that first-in-the-nation status the caucuses have enjoyed over the last half century. There is a state law in Iowa, as in New Hampshire, but both 2008 and 2012 demonstrated that it is fairly toothless. The caucuses in neither case were eight days ahead of the next contest, as called for in state law, and neither party was hit with sanctions for the move.

Moreover, the state/party line has been blurred by the encroachment of same-day party registration at caucus sites in recent years. The state’s tentacles stretch into the caucuses, but that still does not change the fact that the precinct caucuses are a party affair, a party-funded and run operation. And that is kind of the ironic thing about the proposed 70 day buffer required between registration with a party and the caucuses in this bill moving through the Iowa legislature. It retracts those state tentacles to some degree, drawing a sharper line again between state and party domain.

In the end, the fate of this bill beyond the committee is uncertain. But one thing this episode demonstrates is the deterioration of the relationship between Iowa Democrats and Republicans on the one thing that has united them in the past: protecting the status of the caucuses. Republicans unilaterally introducing this measure without consulting the Democratic Party at all on the matter says a lot. And in the long run that will likely hurt Iowa’s efforts to retain its status in the future. 


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Saturday, April 8, 2023

From FHQ Plus: Drama Introduced into Effort to Move Idaho Presidential Primary

The following is cross-posted from FHQ Plus, FHQ's new subscription service. Come check the rest out and consider a paid subscription to support our work. 

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The 2023 state legislative session drags on in Idaho. Gem state lawmakers had targeted last Friday, March 24, as the date on which the body would adjourn. But last Friday came and went and the work has continued well into this week. 

One bill that was a part of that unfinished business was S 1186, the trailer bill to legislation that now sits on the desk of Governor Brad Little (R), having already passed both chambers of the legislature. Together, H 138 and S 1186 were intended to eliminate the separate presidential primary in March and consolidate the election with the primaries for other offices in May. Actually, the House bill was intended to do all of that on its own. But despite the stated intent, all H 138 ever did was strike the presidential primary language from state code. It never built back the statutory infrastructure to add the presidential line to the May primary ballot. S 1186 was the patch for those omissions.

Only, that patch ran into trouble in committee on the House side on Thursday, March 30. Again, H138 is on the governor’s desk. It overwhelmingly passed both chambers with bipartisan support, and S 1186 had cleared the state Senate as well. All that seemingly stood in the way of the intended elimination and consolidation was a quick committee hearing and another presumably lopsided vote in favor of the trailer bill. 

But then came Thursday’s House State Affairs Committee consideration of the measure. The hearing itself covered familiar ground. Sponsors (and the secretary of state) touted the more than $2 million savings consolidating the elections would have while those tightly associated with the state Republican Party cried foul for not being consulted about the potential change ahead of time (before its winter meeting earlier this year).

And it was during that Republican Party backlash to the legislation that the hearing got interesting. Idaho Republican Party Chair Dorothy Moon spoke in opposition to the bill, saying that, if anything, the state party would prefer to move the primary up even further on the calendar than the second Tuesday in March rather than back to May. She went on to say that she and the party would like to have been given the chance to work with the Republican National Committee to move the primary to February; to make Idaho the “Iowa of the West.”

Put a pin in that for a second. That is a storyline in and of itself, but there was another twist. 

All the witnesses who lined up to testify spoke, and it then looked as if the committee was going to move quickly to vote on S 1186 and presumably push it to the floor. Again, the three floor votes that each of these two bills had faced ended with bipartisan passage. The assumption, then, was that State Affairs was going to move this to the House floor for final consideration. Instead, this happened:

State Affairs Committee Chair Brent Crane (R-13th, Nampa): “Senate bill 1186 is properly before the committee."

Silence. [Crane glances around with a slight, knowing grin on his face.]

Chair Crane: “Senate bill 1186 dies for lack of a motion.”

From the Democratic side of the dais: “Uh.”

Chair Crane: “Already made my decision.”

So, with that S 1186 died in committee. 

Now, that could mean a lot of things moving forward. But what it means in the near term is that Governor Little has a decision to make about H 138. If he signs the measure into law, then the March presidential primary is eliminated, but has no home alongside the May primary. If, however, he vetos the House bill, then everything with the presidential primary stays the same as it has been in Idaho for the last two cycles. 

Maintaining the status quo on the March primary may hinge on how much the governor values the cost savings of eliminating the stand-alone presidential primary. If he prioritizes that roughly $2 million savings, then Little may very well sign the bill or allow it to become law without his signature. 

But that means there would be no Idaho presidential primary in 2024, at least not without further action in a special legislative session. It could be that consideration in that setting may occur after enough time that the state Republican Party has had a chance to consult with the RNC about their February primary idea. Granted, that proposal would be dead on arrival with the national party. The RNC set the early calendar in the rules it adopted in April 2022, and Idaho was not among the states given a carve-out to hold February or earlier primaries or caucuses. Additionally, Idaho Republicans would face the national party’s stiff super penalty if it opted to thumb its nose at the rules and conduct a February contest.

That may or may not be enough to deter the Idaho state legislature from going along with an unsanctioned (by the RNC), state-funded presidential primary in February or even raising the presidential primary issue again in a special session. But the Idaho Republican Party may forge ahead without the primary, whether a state-funded option is available or not. 

Gem state Republicans may choose to hold caucuses instead. And, like West Virginia, Idaho fits into this sort of sweet spot with respect to the RNC super penalty. Yes, the penalty would eliminate all but 12 delegates if Idaho broke the timing rules. But there are only 30 Idaho delegates to begin with. Yes, that is a penalty and one that is greater than the old 50 percent reduction that the RNC employed in the 2012 cycle. Yet, it may not be enough to keep Idaho Republicans from forcing the issue and attempting to become the “Iowa of the West.”

And honestly, that may be a good thing for the overall Republican primary calendar for 2024. The Democratic calendar — with South Carolina at the top on February 3 — is likely to push the early Republican states into January, leaving a barren expanse with no contests for all or much of February until Super Tuesday on March 5. A February Idaho caucus and/or a Michigan primary (with waiver) may help fill in that gap.

However, all of that remains to play out. First thing’s first: Governor Little has a decision to make on H 138. And it is a bigger decision than one might expect for a seemingly simple presidential primary bill.

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NOTE: It was reported this past week upon the Idaho legislature adjourning sine die that Governor Little signed H 138 into law. That eliminates the stand-alone March presidential primary in the Gem state, but bigger questions remain about where the Idaho delegate selection events for both parties end up on the 2024 presidential primary calendar.

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Sunday, March 26, 2023

California Bill to Change Primary Date Amended

Earlier this week, significant changes were made to a California Senate bill that, upon its introduction, appeared to affect the date of the consolidated primary, including the presidential primary, in the Golden state.

In fact, the original version of that bill -- SB 24 -- struck the entire section of the California code dealing with various aspects of the primary, leaving the date unspecified. In brief, the introduced bill described the legislation like this:
This bill would change the date of the presidential primary and consolidated statewide direct primary described above to an unspecified date.
As it turns out, however, that was a change meant to serve as a placeholder while the particulars of the intended bill were worked out. The newly amended version of SB 24 was released on Monday, March 20 and revealed that the date of the presidential primary would remain unaffected moving forward. In its place, grander language to put a public financing (of elections) system before the voters of California was inserted. 

California, it seems for now, will remain one of the anchors of Super Tuesday alongside the primary in Texas. 


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Saturday, March 25, 2023

Bill Eliminating Idaho Presidential Primary Ready for Governor

The leadership of the Idaho legislature had targeted Friday, March 24 as the last day of the 2023 regular session. 

But that did not happen. 

Instead, the state Senate dragged through another legislative day at a glacial pace as the state House stood by, finished with its work and awaiting further action from the upper chamber. 

One matter the Senate was able to dispense with was defining the parameters around which the presidential primary will operate for the 2024 cycle. Those bills -- one to eliminate the stand-alone March presidential primary (H 138) and one to consolidate that election with the mid-May primaries for other offices (S 1186) -- were passed on Thursday, March 23. And since the former bill had earlier passed the state House in it current form, the bill was signed by the requisite parties in both chambers and enrolled, ready to be transmitted to the governor for consideration.

But again, that bill merely ends the separate March presidential primary. It does not build the necessary infrastructure into state code to add a presidential line to the May primary for other offices. That amending action is contained in the trailer bill, S 1186. If the amending bill does not also get a thumbs up from the House, then there would simply be no presidential primary in Idaho for 2024. However, that was not the intent of the original bill, incomplete though it may have been. And that likely is not the intent of legislators in the lower chamber either. 

Nonetheless, S 1186 is not yet on the House calendar for when it is due to reconvene on Tuesday, March 28. New to the chamber, the bill would first have to go through committee, and although it has been referred to House State Affairs, S 1186 is not yet on the panel's docket. FHQ is not suggesting that the trailer bill will not be dealt with. It likely will be. The delay is only a function of the end-of-session logjam. 

But what is interesting is that the state Republican Party opposes the primary's shift to May, and it retains the ability to opt for earlier caucuses as a means of assessing presidential preference among Republicans in the state in 2024. Should the governor sign H 138, then proponents of the bill will have gotten at least part of what they wanted out of the 2023 regular session: they will have eliminated the separate presidential primary and saved the state more than $2 million. But the second part of this -- adding the presidential line to the May primary ballot -- becomes superfluous if the state Republican Party ultimately opts to caucus instead of using the later primary. 

The legislative delay at the end of this session, then, may provide legislators (if not the Idaho Republican Party) some time to consider those options in a way that may affect further progress on S 1186. In other words, that action could be saved for a special session (should one be called) after the Republican state central committee makes any decisions on its 2024 delegate selection process. The party may not want to conduct caucuses, but it also does not want such a late presidential primary. It would appear to be a bit of a lose-lose proposition for state Republicans at the moment. 

Yet, that is all speculative. The state legislature will answer some if not all of these questions as it presumably wraps up its regular session work in the week ahead. 

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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 
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Friday, March 24, 2023

Kansas Committee OKs Amended Presidential Primary Bill

During a working session Friday morning, March 24, the state Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee (FSA) convened to markup SB 321, the bill to create a one-off presidential primary election for the 2024 cycle in Kansas. 





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Invisible Primary: Visible -- National Scrutiny has Arrived for DeSantis

Thoughts on the invisible primary and links to the goings on of the moment as 2024 approaches...

There have been hints of this nestled in all the changing tides stories about Donald Trump's fortunes in the 2024 Republican presidential nomination race, but it has come into clearer focus of late. Governor Ron DeSantis is "trending downward." After riding high as the clearest and best-positioned alternative to the  former president, DeSantis was due for an inevitable down cycle in coverage. 

And those types of stories are starting to trickle out as indictment watch whips itself into a froth. 

Again, all of this was inevitable. Recall that, until now, there was a steady stream of caveats to DeSantis' top challenger status. And they all collectively warned that the Florida governor had not been tested on the national stage. He had not been scrutinized. Well, that was going to come and this may be the first clear wave of it. The crux of it all is that it was going to happen, but how DeSantis responds -- or probably more accurately weathers -- this and subsequent waves of scrutiny and/or the slumping news cycle or two will likely define whether he is able to maintain his perceived positioning as the invisible primary marches on. 

What is difficult for DeSantis and others vying for the Republican nomination is that the indictment circus is likely to take up a lot of the oxygen in the near term, keeping the focus on Trump and less on those seeking to challenge him. It is tougher to counter flagging coverage when most eyes are elsewhere.


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Actions not words in New Hampshire. Focus less on the repetition of the same tired lines from the Granite state governor and more to what the New Hampshire Democratic Party is now doing as 2024 -- and a likely rogue New Hampshire primary -- approaches. 


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It has been one of those mid-session weeks in state capitals across the country. Legislation, generally, is moving, but presidential primary legislation is moving in particular. Hawaii, Idaho and Kansas have been active this week in shifting or establishing presidential primaries. 


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On this date...
...in 1992, Jerry Brown narrowly beat Bill Clinton in the Connecticut primary, starting a short streak of small state victories to end March and start April (the last of his wins that cycle). President George H.W. Bush coasted to victory on the Republican side.

...in 2012, Rick Santorum scored the last of his victories before dropping out in early April with a win in the Louisiana primary. The delegate allocation Pelican state Republicans used that cycle was (and is) a good reminder of the variation that can and does exist across states in the Republican allocation rules. 

...in 2020, it was to have been the date of the Georgia primary, a departure from what had become a string of Super Tuesday primaries. But the coronavirus pushed the election in the Peach state back to June 2020. This was also the date on which the Delaware presidential primary was delayed due to the pandemic.

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Thursday, March 23, 2023

Idaho Presidential Primary Bills Pass Senate

The two bills that would eliminate the stand-alone March presidential primary in Idaho and merge it with the May primaries for other offices passed the state Senate on Thursday, March 23. 


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Kansas Presidential Primary Push Faces Friday Deadline

The Kansas state Senate Federal and State Affairs Committee convened on Thursday, March 23 to conduct a hearing on the newly introduced SB 321. Brought forth formally just one day prior, the measure would establish a presidential primary election in the Sunflower state for the 2024 cycle. 

The Thursday hearing was revealing for several reasons:
1. This bill is going to move fast if it is going to move at all. Across the legislature, committees face a deadline of Friday, March 24 to complete work on certain bills. SB 321 is among those certain bills. It faces a very quick trip from introduction one day to public hearing the next and finally followed by a working session after which there will be action to either pass the bill on to the Senate floor for consideration or leave it in committee. That working session will fall on deadline day and is still awaiting a fiscal note being delayed by counties who have been asked to quickly ascertain how much an additional election would cost at the local level. 

2. The principal driver behind the effort to reestablish the Kansas presidential primary is the state Republican Party. The state Democratic Party was unaware of the possible change.

3. While the state Republican Party entertained an earlier Super Tuesday date for the primary, March 19 -- the first Tuesday after March 15 -- was chosen in order for the party be able to allocate delegates in a winner-take-all manner. March 15 is important because that is the date before which truly winner-take-all allocation methods are prohibited by Republican National Committee rule. [This is something FHQ raised on social media earlier.]

4. The sponsor of the competing Senate bill to reestablish the presidential primary but pair it with the primaries for other offices spoke in favor of the new legislation. But Senator Caryn Tyson (R-12th, Anderson) urged the committee to consider consolidating the primaries to cut down on the total costs associated with carrying out nominating elections. [The Kansas secretary of state's office at the hearing roughly estimated -- again, without full input from the counties -- that the price tag would come in around $4.5 million. That expenditure may or may not be an issue for legislators.] Tyson continued that her bill was intended as a conversation starter on shifting to a primary and that the first Tuesday following the first Monday in May date was a suggestion based on how little it would overlap with the legislative session. A consolidated primary any earlier would have legislators campaigning and raising funds during the legislative session, a conflict of interest issue that often pops up in states when consolidated primaries are discussed. The cost savings may be tempting to legislators but the campaigning conflict may offset it. The bottom line with respect to Tyson's bill (SB 290) is that it is not going anywhere and the May timing may or may not be workable. One thing consolidation would do would be to permanently schedule all the primaries for a particular time. 

5. On a similar note, as mentioned in the post about the introduction of SB 321, this is a one-off action for 2024. That there would just be a presidential primary in 2024 was confirmed in the course of the hearing. Kansas would revert to a system in which the parties run the process in 2028 and beyond. The consolidation path would avoid that drawback.

6. The state Democratic Party was not present to comment on the bill or whether they would opt into a primary, if available. Kansas Democrats held a party-run primary by mail in 2020.

Given the haste with which this measure has already moved, it is likely that it will come out of committee in some form after the working session on March 24. There may be some changes, but it seems unlikely that any of the thornier issues like consolidation will be addressed. It would open a can of worms in a process that has already been maximally streamlined and can afford no delays given the deadlines facing the committee. 
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Hawaii Committee Shakes Up Presidential Primary Bill

The lone surviving bill to establish a presidential primary in Hawaii no longer charts a path toward Super Tuesday. 







Related:



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See more on our political/electoral consulting venture at FHQ Strategies. 
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Wednesday, March 22, 2023

Alternate Kansas Bill Would Reestablish a Presidential Primary in March

New legislation out of Kansas would reestablish a presidential primary in the Sunflower state and schedule it for mid-March. 






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This legislation has been added to FHQ's updated 2024 presidential primary calendar. 



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Committee Hearing Demonstrates Broad Support for Effort to Reestablish Missouri Presidential Primary

The push to reinstate the Missouri presidential preference primary finally got its day before committee on Wednesday, March 22. The House Special Committee on Public Policy heard testimony on two identical bills to put back in statute code that was eliminated as part of omnibus elections legislation that passed the General Assembly and was signed into law in 2022. 

A few things quickly became clear in the course of the hearing. First, but for one opponent and a handful of informational witnesses, everyone in a long list of those providing comments -- from voters to state and county party chairs to statewide and local elections officials to union lobbyists -- was in favor of the move. Rep. Rudy Veit (R-59th, Cole), the sponsor of one of the bills (HB 347) leaned heavily into the idea of caucuses disenfranchising military and government personnel (fire, police, etc.) relative to the options available in a state-run primary election. The sponsor of the other bill (HB 267), Rep. Cyndi Buchheit-Courtway (R-115th, Jefferson) mentioned that she got into politics with a simple slogan, "fighting for our voices to be heard," an idea she said was violated with no presidential primary. 

Notably, the leadership of both state parties -- Chair Nick Myers and Vice Chair Leann Green of the Missouri Republican Party and newly elected Missouri Democratic Party Chair Russ Carnahan -- supported the effort. Carnahan went so far as to say that hurting voters' ability to participate in the presidential nomination process would further erode perceptions about the legitimacy of elections. 

Second, the costs of such an election -- a stand-alone March presidential primary -- were repeatedly raised. Rep. Veit and others cited the estimated $10 million price tag, but shrugged it off, saying it was the price of democracy. Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft (R) in his testimony noted that the cost would not come out of one year of the budget but be spread across four. 

And while Ashcroft did not speak for or against the legislation, he urged lawmakers to "pick one," caucuses or a primary. But he also made a point, talking about the presidential primary, to say that he was "philosophically" against holding a vote that does not matter. The secretary did not mean that the March election would fall too late in the calendar. Rather, he wrongly suggested that the primary has no bearing on either delegate allocation or selection in Missouri; that delegates are not bound. 

[FHQ aside: Again, this is wrong. It is an impression that seems to have been forged during the 2012 cycle when Missouri lawmakers could not find a way to move or then cancel a primary that the Missouri Republican Party (who had the active nomination race that cycle) opted out of. The primary still occurred on the state's dime, but caucuses were where delegates were selected (and though unbound were largely committed to particular candidates). Missouri Republicans, however, did not operate in that manner during the last competitive cycle in 2016 (nor 2020 for that matter). The party allocated delegates based on the primary because RNC rules during that cycle mandated it and further backed up that binding in all states at the national convention.

Ashcroft also projects past Republican issues in Missouri onto Show-Me state Democrats, who do not and have not had those same problems as state Republicans because the process is more regulated at the national party level. But those problems have already been dealt with by the RNC.]

Finally, another theme that may end up affecting this legislation down the line was the idea of consolidating primaries. Elections officials in attendance and testifying described the difficulty of pulling off one presidential primary election in March only to have to turn around and do it all over again in April with nonpartisan local elections. But the same election administrators were cool to the notion of combining a partisan election with a nonpartisan election when it came up because of the impact it would have on correctly generating and distributing many different versions of a ballot to voters. 

But if there is no state law requiring a primary, then none of this matters anyway. A state law would, of course, require elections officials, regardless of the burdens, to implement whatever state law calls for. And although a consolidated election may increase some headaches for elections officials across Missouri, it would both tamp down on the costs borne by the state and maximize turnout.

No votes were taken on either HB 267 or HB 347 in committee on Wednesday, but the hearing showcased some of the common tradeoffs involved in the presidential nomination process. 


Posted by Josh Putnam at 4:00 PM 0 comments
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