California looking to move primary up to 3rd after IA/NH.

[Pericles]

California is far more representative of the Democratic Party than Iowa and New Hampshire and should have a far greater role in determining the Democratic nominee.

[The Mikado]

No. Californians don't know how to count. In a competitive primary, it'd be awful to have hundreds of thousands of votes counted months later altering delegate count.

I'm not anti-early big state, but somewhere like Illinois or Pennsylvania or even Florida would be better than CA or NY.

[rosin]

If they do, they should have their delegates stripped and a media blackout like the DNC did to Florida and Michigan in 2008.

how the heck was that fair

Are you saying Hillary was unfairly robbed of the nomination in 2008?

Um no Im saying to have their delegates stripped despite having a primary seems undemocratic . Also No Hillary wasnt unfairly robbed since if they didnt strip the delegates obama would have campaigned there more.

They state parties knew the rules and the possible penalties - or at least they should - and still they chose to move their primaries up early.

[henster]

California is far more representative of the Democratic Party than Iowa and New Hampshire and should have a far greater role in determining the Democratic nominee.

They may not be representative of the party but both are swing states while Cali is not.

[Mr. Smith]

California is far more representative of the Democratic Party than Iowa and New Hampshire and should have a far greater role in determining the Democratic nominee.

They may not be representative of the party but both are swing states while Cali is not.

South Carolina isn't either and yet it's the 3rd or 4th one usually.

Also, Iowa may not necessarily stay that way.

[Hammy]

How about, let the campaigning start in January, have the first states to vote (and have that in March) be a same day vote in FL/TX/CA/NY for the best cross-section of the electorate--then the next three months compete for the smaller states.

[Shadows]

While moving CA early will make it less relevant & rightfully so, having it in 3rd is going to drive out smaller candidates who won't have the money to advertise & will make people even more dependent on Super pacs. Also people will be campaigning hard & parking themselves in CA because of the huge delegates & it will screw the whole process.

Have CA in March end or mid-April. IMO NY was perfectly timed !

[Mr. Morden]

Stop saying that this would move the primary to "third" after Iowa and NH.  It wouldn't.  As I said in my post upthread, this would move it to the third Tuesday of March, but give the governor an option to move it earlier, as this article explains but the Politico article doesn't:

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/04/11/2020-presidential-election-early-california-primary-sb568/

Sure, the governor could move it all the way up to February, but he's not going to do that, because it would be pointless.  The national parties would impose steep delegate sanctions, and because the law forces the gov to announce such a date change 8 months in advance, the other states would have plenty of time to move their primaries up as well.  So there is no realistic scenario in which California is going to go third.

[Mr. Morden]

Actually, this raises an interesting question: If California moves up to March 17th, where it would join Arizona, Florida, and Illinois, would that become the new Super Tuesday (Super Irish Tuesday, because it's St. Patrick's Day)?  Fewer states voting that day than on March 3rd, but with California in the mix, it might be more delegates than Texas and the other Southern states voting on March 3rd.  Someone should do the calculation.

[SteveRogers]

If they do, they should have their delegates stripped and a media blackout like the DNC did to Florida and Michigan in 2008.

how the heck was that fair

Are you saying Hillary was unfairly robbed of the nomination in 2008?

Um no Im saying to have their delegates stripped despite having a primary seems undemocratic . Also No Hillary wasnt unfairly robbed since if they didnt strip the delegates obama would have campaigned there more.

They state parties knew the rules and the possible penalties - or at least they should - and still they chose to move their primaries up early.

The problem with the Democratic Party punishing Florida based on that logic is that it was the Republican controlled government making the decision of when to place their primaries.

[tallguy23]

As a native Californian, I'm obviously happy about this. There's no reason Iowa and NH should get such huge advantages.

I still think we should have a national primary day though.

[The Ex-Factor]

Didn't California move their primary up to Super Tuesday in 2008, found it was a total bust, and just moved it back to June?

[Rjjr77]

Honestly maybe Washington and Nevada should switch, but having large states early is absurdly unfair, and basically makes the candidate with the most money or the one from that state the winner

[Cory]

I don't understand why some here don't see that having large, expensive states go early just loads the game in favor of the front-runner/establishment favorite or the favorite son/daughter.

The Iowa/New Hampshire/Nevada/South Carolina system is just fine. The main reform I would make is to abolish caucuses and just have primaries for every state.

[Mr. Morden]

Actually, this raises an interesting question: If California moves up to March 17th, where it would join Arizona, Florida, and Illinois, would that become the new Super Tuesday (Super Irish Tuesday, because it's St. Patrick's Day)?  Fewer states voting that day than on March 3rd, but with California in the mix, it might be more delegates than Texas and the other Southern states voting on March 3rd.  Someone should do the calculation.

OK, I just did the math on this, and indeed, if California moves up to March 17th, where it would join Arizona, Florida, and Illinois, that would become the new Super Tuesday, if we're defining "Super Tuesday" as the primary date with the most delegates at stake rather than the largest number of states.  This remains true (albeit just barely) even if Georgia joins the other Southern states on March 3rd.

[Mr. Morden]

I don't understand why some here don't see that having large, expensive states go early just loads the game in favor of the front-runner/establishment favorite or the favorite son/daughter.

If you’re talking about large states go first, as in even before Iowa/New Hampshire, then I agree with you.  But if you were to actually stack more than one large state immediately after IA/NH, then I think it’s more complicated.  In that case, if there is a dark horse candidate who manages to get a big national polling boost out of winning IA or NH, then putting a bunch of big states immediately afterwards would give them a chance to capitalize on that momentum before the other candidates are able to fight back.  It could actually magnify the importance of IA/NH if the states that immediately follow are too big even for the well funded candidates to tackle.

As an example, look at the GOP race of 2008.  Romney had the biggest campaign warchest, but Huckabee and McCain managed to beat him in Iowa and New Hampshire respectively, because you can win those states without spending a lot of money.  McCain’s New Hampshire victory put him in the lead in national polling, and so if Super Duper Tuesday (which included many big states) had been held just one week later, neither Romney nor any other candidate would have been able to catch up to him.  His win in New Hampshire would have determined the whole race.  That’s because Super Tuesday that year included so many different big media markets that for even well funded candidates like Romney, it was prohibitively expensive to wage a serious air war.  The battlefield was too big, even for the best funded candidate.

But Super Duper Tuesday wasn’t just a week after NH that year, so Romney did actually have some chance at a comeback, even though it didn’t pan out for him.  With his big spending in Michigan, he notched a victory there (though there was also a favorite son effect at work), and then he came close to doing the same in Florida, if you believed the polls at the time, but that was undone by Charlie Crist’s endorsement of McCain, which coincided with a last minute turn in the polls back towards McCain.

Still, I maintain that having one big state primary at a time was the optimal scenario for a well-funded candidate to make a comeback after seemingly getting knocked out of contention by a less well-funded candidate in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Whereas getting many big states at the same time right after IA/NH would probably amplify IA/NH’s importance, because the subsequent battlefield is too big for any candidate to play in.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

State-by-state primaries are flawed by nature. I agree with Gerald Ford it should be done at least region-by-region, if not nationwide.

[McGovernForPrez]

If I had to make a reform to the primary process, I'd stop front loading the democratic primary with southern states. Making sure a candidate is favored by white voters is more probably more important than making a sure a candidate is favored by black voters, considering how white voters are a far more elastic voting group. I actually really like the first 4 states we have though. They are by and large representative of the four major regions of our country. Iowa covers the rustbelt/midwest, NH covers the northeast, Nevada, the west, and South Carolina, the south. If super Tuesday had a more geographically diverse selection of states it'd be interesting to see whether the "Sanders is finished" narrative would've stuck.

[catographer]

#nationalprimarydaylikeinfrance

would be way more fair, would cut the election season time by half at least. just a national primary in all 50 states and territories, then a top-two runoff like in france or california.

btw anybody else find it weird that territories that can't vote for president in the general (puerto rico, guam, mariana islands, etc.) can vote in primaries?

[Rjjr77]

#nationalprimarydaylikeinfrance

would be way more fair, would cut the election season time by half at least. just a national primary in all 50 states and territories, then a top-two runoff like in france or california.

btw anybody else find it weird that territories that can't vote for president in the general (puerto rico, guam, mariana islands, etc.) can vote in primaries?

nationwide primary would cost hundreds of millions. We'd have no Bill Clinton, no Jimmy Carter...maybe this wouldnt be so bad...

[Mr. Morden]

A single national primary day would probably mean that we'd constantly be having contested conventions, since the only reason candidates manage to get a majority of delegates in most cases is because the second tier candidates are winnowed out in the early primaries.  So yeah, you'd need some kind of runoff system (or IRV) to make it work, to avoid contested conventions.

But all of this doesn't matter, because it's not going to happen.  Every single thread about the primary calendar here turns into people complaining about the system and suggesting reforms that are realistically never going to happen.

[Mr. Morden]

Josh Putnam offers more details on the California move here:

http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2017/04/california-and-2020-prime-time-primary.html

As he says, this bill would not move California into the third spot on the calendar, and moving to the third spot on the calendar is pretty much impossible, since the other states would just move ahead of it anyway.

[izixs]

All 50 states should vote on the same day

This is the only correct answer to what should be. The problem is getting it to be the actual case. There are three ways to do it: National law, Interstate compact/agreement, Party mandate.

The first is obvious but might upset the 'lol states rights' people. The interstate compact would simply be that some number of states agree to have their primary all on the same day in Feb or March no matter what the national parties say or do as well as requiring the state party to have a primary to prevent them from having a caucus which they send off to somewhere on the calendar. The party mandate is the most direct option but the most difficult to enforce or enact. Only seat delegates (or do away with delegates entirely for the nomination system, making caucuses irrelevant really) from states that have their contest on the proper day. If one party does this, the other might opt to go with, or leave it to their state parties to handle the specifics.

[7,052,770]

All 50 states should go on the same day, as others have said.

I wouldn't mind a two-step process where we narrow it down to 2 and then runoff a month later or something.

[Cynthia]

National primary day with IRV should work well IMO