RNC Rules Committee passes major overhaul of primary calendar for 2012

[jimrtex]

I've tried to indicate regional primaries within pods.  Numbers are representatives (ie population)

First 4: 4 states, 16 representatives.

Small States: 14 states, DC, plus territories, 25 representatives.

X Pod: 16 states, 126 representatives: Upper Midwest 2, 16; Border 5, 32; South Central 4, 22; Texas 1, 32; West 4, 24.

Y Pod: 9 states, 131 representatives: California-Arizona 2, 61; Upper South 4, 42; Northeast 3, 28.

Z Pod: 7 states, 138 representatives: New York-Pennsylvania 2, 48; Midwest 3, 52; Florida-Georgia 2, 38.

I would swap Indiana and Maryland which are isolated within their pods.  Maryland could be part of the Upper South or the Northeast group.  And Indiana could be Upper Midwest or Border.

The February pods only have about 1/10 of the population, and if SC and NV go on the Saturday after NH candidates will have to devote some time to these states, especially if Nevada switches to a primary.  Better yet would be to have a lottery to decide whether SC and NV go before IA and NH or after.

[jimrtex]

The only problem I see with this plan is that state populations aren't static and you're going to have to move things around every so often.

The moving dates also present a real cost to states like IL that use the presidential primary for the general primary. County clerks would be forced to change the date of the general primary every four years and that impacts a host of other dates like petitions, challenges, etc. When IL moved up the date this year from 3rd Tue Mar to 1st Tue Feb it was with a number of concessions to the clerks to make them agreeable. I don't see how that happens if imposed from the national party.

Maybe they could separate the State primary from the presidential primary, like California did.  California used to have a June primary for both presidential and Statewide elections (RFK was assassinated in June 1968).  Then they kept moving it forward in presidential years, while continuing to hold it in June in non-presidential years.  This year, when they moved the presidential primary to February, they split it from the State primary.  So instead of yoyo-ing back and forth 4 months every two years, the State has one consistent election date for the one where most candidates for office will be running, and a separate date for an election that is not even for State officers, but rather to choose delegates for a private organization's national convention.

One reason that Texas did not move its presidential primary, is that it would have moved all the filing deadlines for all the other offices into the previous year, and the county election people would have been having to updating and mailing out registration cards over the holidays.  One solution that was suggested was to actually open up the filing deadline in October 2007 so the filing period wouldn't be over the holidays.  They also kept finding laws that referred to calendar years that were based on a silly assumption that the preliminaries for an election in November (including some for 2-year terms) would take less than 10 months.

I just checked the primary election dates for some previous elections.  In 1972, New Hampshire had an early March primary.  The next primary was Wisconsin's in early April.

[jimrtex]

I just checked the primary election dates for some previous elections.  In 1972, New Hampshire had an early March primary.  The next primary was Wisconsin's in early April.

Where did you find the information on past dates?

Congressional Quarterly, Presidential Elections Since 1789

I was looking on Abe's Books and they had bunches for under $5 including shipping.  It is published after every election, so you might want to check the year.  I got mine at a library used book sale a few years ago and it only goes through 1972.