clair017

This post is part of a series examining efforts -- both attempted and successful -- to move presidential primary election  dates for 2020  during the now-adjourning  2017-2018 state legislative sessions  in capitols across the country. While  shifts tend to be rare  in sessions immediately following a presidential election, introduced legislation is more common albeit unsuccessful more often than not. -- Rare are the times when Illinois has pulled up the stakes on its traditional third Tuesday in March primary to move elsewhere on the presidential primary calendar. In fact, the only time in the post-reform era legislators in the Land of Lincoln shifted what is called the general primary -- a consolidated primary that includes the presidential primary -- was ahead of a cycle when a favorite son was seeking the Democratic nomination. While other states are moving around from cycle to cycle, that just does not happen in Illinois. Like other states, Illinois ...

This post is part of a series examining efforts -- both attempted and successful -- to move presidential primary election  dates for 2020  during the now-adjourning  2017-2018 state legislative sessions  in capitols across the country. While  shifts tend to be rare  in sessions immediately following a presidential election, introduced legislation is more common albeit unsuccessful more often than not. -- Midway through the 2017 session of the West Virginia legislature then-state senator, Jeff Mullins (R-9th(A), Raleigh) introduced SB 33 . The intent of the bill was to uproot the biennial state primary -- which includes the presidential primary every fourth year -- from its traditional second Tuesday in May position to the second Friday  in February. Although the bill was referred to the Senate Judiciary Committee for consideration, it was never taken up by the panel. It never received a hearing and languished there the rest of the session. There are a ...

This post is part of a series examining efforts -- both attempted and successful -- to move presidential primary election  dates for 2020  during the now-adjourning  2017-2018 state legislative sessions  in capitols across the country. While  shifts tend to be rare  in sessions immediately following a presidential election, introduced legislation is more common albeit unsuccessful more often than not. -- This is a fun one. During the 2017 Texas state legislative session, Rep. Lyle Larson ( R-122, San Antonio ) once again introduced proactive legislation to move the presidential primary (and all others that are traditionally consolidated with it in the Lone Star state) to the fourth Tuesday in January . HB 3180 would have had the same effect as the legislation Larson authored in 2015 . And it ended up in the same place: on the sidelines as the legislature wrapped up its business. This is a fun one because the committee discussion around it neatly encapsulat...

John DiStaso from WMUR in New Hampshire : Democratic National Committeewoman Kathy Sullivan said she expects a correction will soon be made to the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee’s proposed 2020 schedule of early caucus and primary states to ensure no conflicts are on the horizon. ... Sullivan said that due to a clerical error, the draft discussed at the meeting two weeks ago set up a potential conflict between New Hampshire and Nevada – not unlike a major controversy that erupted on the Republican side in the fall of 2011 prior to the 2012 primaries and caucuses. ... “It was a mistake,” she said after conferring with DNC officials. “Everyone now understands and it was the intention that the calendar should be the same as it was in 2016.” In that year, the New Hampshire Primary was held on Feb. 9 and Nevada followed until 11 days later, Feb. 20. Placing Nevada just four days after New Hampshire in the proposed Rule 12.A was something FHQ raised in the aftermath of the DNC Rules and Byl...

It is strange what does and does not pick up steam on social media sometimes. When late last week I flagged the Astead Herndon article in the New York Times updating the Democratic efforts to finalize rules for the 2020 presidential nomination process, I was doing so more for personal reasons. As I explained in the remainder of the thread , I was more interested in bookmarking the article because there were several notes in it that deserved some attention if not pushback. The window of attention was much more immediate for FHQ, then, than it was seemingly taken by most. Again, whereas I meant to relatively soon get back to what I see as the flaws of the NYT piece, most took it as FHQ flagging the proposed rule change -- specifically the scaling back of superdelegates -- for a time, far down the road, when the unintended consequences of the change will potentially be felt. But the thing is, that overall story has not changed -- the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee continues to conside...

This post is part of a series examining efforts -- both attempted and successful -- to move presidential primary election  dates for 2020  during the now-adjourning  2017-2018 state legislative sessions  in capitols across the country. While  shifts tend to be rare  in sessions immediately following a presidential election, introduced legislation is more common albeit unsuccessful more often than not. -- For much of the post-2016 period, FHQ, in looking ahead to the 2020 cycle, has often raised the caucus-to-primary shifts in Colorado , Maine , and Minnesota . All three formerly caucus states in various ways laid the groundwork in 2016 for 2020 presidential primaries. But that trio of states is not alone in the switch. In its 2017 session, the Utah state legislature passed legislation -- which was ultimately signed into law -- to provide for a state-funded and run presidential primary option in the Beehive state for the 2020 cycle. And the motivation for ...

This post is part of a series examining efforts -- both attempted and successful -- to move presidential primary election dates for 2020 during the now-adjourning 2017-2018 state legislative sessions in capitols across the country. While shifts tend to be rare in sessions immediately following a presidential election, introduced legislation is more common albeit unsuccessful more often than not. -- During the spring of 2017, legislation was introduced in the Washington, DC Council to shift the date on which future primary elections in the district would be held. The impetus behind Councilmember Charles Allen's ( D-Ward 6 ) B22-0197 was multifaceted . Primarily, shifting local primaries out of September (to where the elections had been returned in 2014) was intended to ease pressure on district compliance with the federal MOVE act. The timeline of the certification for September primary winners threatened to overlap with the 45 day window required by the federal law to distribut...

Update (5/24/18) : The Rules and Bylaws Committee appears poised to alter the proposed rules change to bring the timing of the early states roughly in line with the calendar from 2016 . This past week as the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) reconvened to begin adopting a draft of the 2020 delegate selection rules, it quietly tackled the basic structure of the primary calendar. Seemingly, nothing out of the ordinary occurred. Even at the time the RBC was considering Rule 12 (Timing of the Delegate Selection Process), FHQ remarked on how the privileged positions of the carve-out states, a controversial topic at RBC meetings in past cycles, took a backseat to a proposed amendment to another section of the rule. After a reading of the full text of the short rule, then, the committee moved into a discussion that had little to do with Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. But the language of the adopted Rule 12.A is worth some time. The calendar above depicts this, but here i...

...at the margins. -- On Tuesday, May 8, the Democratic National Committee Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) reconvened for its fourth series of public meetings of 2018. This meeting -- at this particular point in the cycle -- is typically the mark-up meeting. The RBC starts going through the delegate selection rules in sequence, offering proposed amendments along the way. The session on Tuesday pushed through much of the rule book that fits under the purview of the mission at FHQ. For example, while the RBC punted on the substance of the superdelegates question of the cycle -- the actual reduction of the role of the unpledged delegates -- but laid the groundwork for a change. It added a new rule, creating a new class of automatic delegates by breaking that group off from the broader group of unpledged delegates formalized in the old Rule 9. Additionally, the RBC retained the same basic framework of the primary calendar from 2016, adjusting it to dates falling on different days in 2020 ...

Just four years after it created the committee to sanction presidential primary debates , the Republican National Committee this past week at its 2018 spring meeting voted to strike the rule from its rulebook. There are a couple of points that FHQ would raise both in reaction to the rules change and the coverage it has garnered. On the rules change itself, some context is in order. Often FHQ talks of the national parties fighting the last battle when it comes to fashioning their delegate selection rules for a coming presidential nomination cycle. Indeed, the modus operandi of the national parties has tended to be "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," which is necessarily backward looking. The national parties look back to the most recent evidence they have on how well or how poorly the system is working and attempt to make corrections to address any shortcomings for future cycles. The Democrats' efforts in assembling their rules for the 2020 cycle are littere...

As expected , a bill that would have established a separate and earlier presidential primary in Nebraska quietly died when the legislature in the Cornhusker state adjourned in mid-April. While the bill --  LB 1032  -- received a hearing in committee, it failed to gain traction just as a similar effort did in 2016. The push in Nebraska is yet another primary movement casualty during the 2017-18 legislative sessions across the country. To this point, only California has successfully shifted the date of its presidential primary for the 2020 cycle. Every other bill in other states failed at some point in the legislative process. While the pace of 2020 primary movement has been slow thus far in the cycle, that is fairly common. Most of that activity continues to take place in the year before the presidential election year. Shifts happen during the other three years in a cycle, but it tends to be exception rather than rule.