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If one goes on headlines alone , then SB 655 passing the North Carolina state senate with no dissent is a rather mundane if not arcane legislative action. However, as is often the case, there is some nuance to what Tar Heel state legislators in the state's upper chamber accomplished. The accomplishment? The state senate passed legislation setting the date of a consolidated primary -- presidential, state and local primaries -- for the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March. Of course, the real value in this bill is certainty. By selecting a fixed date, legislators eliminated the atypical biennial rotation the North Carolina primary was stuck in after the passage of an omnibus elections law package in 2013. For much of the post-reform era -- 1972 to now -- North Carolina has had a consolidated primary election. And for much of that period, the Tar Heel state was rooted on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in May . Since the state concurrently held all of its primaries...

Legislators in California are eyeing an earlier position on the 2020 presidential primary calendar . There has been legislation ( SB 568 ) to do something with the California presidential primary that has been active in the Golden state legislature since February . Amendments quietly added at the end of March garnered more attention yesterday with a press release from the secretary of state and the bill's author in the state Senate. The change? Move California's June primary up in the process. But not just move it up, shift it into a position on the heels of Iowa and New Hampshire at the front of the 2020 queue. In reality, this sounds more provocative than it actually is. This is not Florida or Michigan moving into January for the 2008 cycle. Instead, the California maneuvering is more subtle, yet motivated by similar reasoning. States, regardless of size, mainly want a couple of things out of the presidential nomination process: 1) their voters to have a say in the identity ...