On April 21, Florida Republican Party state chair David Bitner delivered a talk in which he said Florida will have its presidential primary in 2012 before any other state, except for New Hampshire and South Carolina. That would mean holding the Florida primary in February, because many other states will hold presidential primaries the first week in March. See this story.
Florida’s omnibus election law bill contains a provision letting the Secretary of State choose the primary date, but he must choose a date in the first three months of the year.
New Hampshire Democrats have responded by criticizing the New Hampshire Republican Party state chair for not denouncing the Florida Republican Party’s intents, even though Florida is not proposing to go earlier than New Hampshire. See this Politico story.
The omnibus bill provides for a date selection committee, composed of three members appointed by each of the governor, House speaker, and president of the Senate. No more than two of each trio of appointees could be of one party. The Secretary of State would be a non-voting chair.
Presumably, Republicans will control the committee and select a date in January.
There is a change in the candidate selection process. Previously, the Secretary of State chose the candidates who would appear on the presidential primary ballot. Now it is each party.
In 2008, the DNC forbade candidates from campaigning in prematurely-early States. The campaigns cheated on this by advertising heavily on national cable programming that would be shown in Florida, and in Michigan Hillary Clinton neglected to ask the SOS to remove her name from the ballot.
Conceivably, the DNC could convince (coerce) the Florida party to not provide any candidate names.
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When the party hack robots have nothing else to do they mess with Prez primary stuff.
One more reason to ABOLISH the timebomb Electoral College.
Uniform definition of Elector in ALL of the U.S.A.
P.R. legislative
nonpartisan App.V. executive/judicial
-pending MAJOR public education about head to head math.