According to this article, New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan says New Hampshire might hold its presidential primary at the end of 2023, instead of in 2024, if necessary to make the state’s primary the first one. New Hampshire Secretaries of State can set the date themselves. Scanlan will treat Iowa as a primary state if the Democrats in Iowa do let non-attendees cast a mail ballot. So that means Scanlan would be determined to hold New Hampshire’s presidential primary before the Iowa caucuses.
No state government has ever held a presidential primary in the year before the presidential election. The earliest government-administered presidential primary ever held was New Hampshire 2008 primary, held on January 8.
Why not get a time machine and make it in 2022? Or how about holding the 2028 primary in 2023 at the same time? Two for the price of one? No?
Or at least –
on a primary day the day after a General Election Day ???
— ie continuous torture for voters / candidates ???
States should consider letting each qualified party decide when to hold its primary.
If the state pays for the primary, it should split the costs. If parties decide on separate dates, then each party should pay for any amount in excess of the amount budgeted to it.
Meanwhile under NH law minor party and independent candidates are prevented from circulating petitions until the calendar year of the election.
Since NH requires their primary to be at least one week before any other state’s primary, I would like to see some other state pass a similar law requiring its primary to be at least one week before any other state’s primary. The respective Secretaries of State would have to keep “leapfrogging” each other by scheduling their primaries earlier and earlier until they got to the point where they would be scheduling their primaries in the past.
I wonder how far back they would go. Would they stop by agreeing to both hold their 2024 primaries on July 4, 1776? Or would they keep going back, to prehistory or the time of the dinosaurs or the Big Bang?
They’d have to go back to the time about 6000 years ago when God created the universe.