On June 21, California State Senator Ricardo Lara amended his SB 568. The original bill moved the primary for all office from June to March, but only in presidential years. The amended bill provides that the primary would be in March in midterm years as well as presidential years. However, it would not take effect until January 1, 2019.
The bill has already passed the Senate, and the Assembly Elections Committee, and is now in the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
Ugh. I hate the concept of California holding a presidential primary in March. For that matter, I don’t think any state at all should be holding a presidential primary or caucus before April 1.
I have often discussed the idea that we need a constitutional amendment that creates a schedule for when the states are allowed to hold presidential primaries or caucuses. All of the states should be prohibited from holding them before April 1; allow only the smallest states – with one or two seats in the House (i.e., 3 or 4 electoral college votes) – to hold them in April; allow the medium-sized states – with 3 to 10 seats in the House (i.e., 5 to 12 electoral college votes) – to hold them during May, and then require all of the rest of the states to wait until June.
I think I first came up with this idea over 12 years ago, maybe even as much as 20 years ago. I got the idea because I saw that the states have been and still are irrationally competing with one another to move their primaries/caucuses to earlier and earlier in the year; each state which does so have done it because they can be “relevant” to the nomination, rather than waiting to be among the next-to-last, and the nomination seems to already be “clinched” by the time they vote.
Maybe I ought to increase the frequency and the volume of when I discuss this idea, and see if more people will agree with me that we can’t continue allowing the states to compete with each other about moving the primaries forward. Congress should propose an amendment somewhat along the lines I suggest, don’t you agree?
@Mark Dunlap
The one reason why I think the parties won’t like your idea is money. They want the nomination to be decided early so that less money is spent on fighting each other and more money is available to go up against the other party.