Pressing The Flesh

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

It has long baffled me why a state with as many electoral votes as Pennsylvania, which in recent elections has become a key state for candidates to win, waits until May to hold its Primary elections.

That may be changing now, as Pennsylvania mulls over whether or not to follow the tide and move the date of their Primary Elections up to February 12th - a week after the newly-forming "Super Tuesday" of February 5th.

We here at PTF have long advocated against the current process of Primaries, which allow states like Iowa and New Hampshire (clearly states that are wholly unrepresentative of the nation at large) to crown a victor in the races before the voice of the nation as a whole has been heard.

As it stands, the Pennsylvania primary results, at least for President, have been largely insignificant and meaningless. The victors of each party's nomination have usually been determined long before people of Pennsylvania weigh in.

But beyond that, it creates and reinforces the sense amongst voters that "my vote doesn't count - it won't make a difference." EVERY voter needs to feel as though their vote DOES make a difference before we'll ever see numbers at the polls increasing.

We would prefer to see a streamlined series of perhaps four primary election dates. The groupings could be organized by means of regional sections of the country, although a better method may perhaps be by size of the states. If elections were held solely by geography, it would be easy to see candidates focusing on New York in the Northeast or California in the West, while giving no attention to Rhode Island or Nevada, respectively.

With the current trend of states shifting their individual dates, this might be just the time to begin once again pondering election reform such as this.

Posted by FleshPresser at 11:33 AM /

1 Comments

doomsy posted at 1:59 PM
If we’re going to change the primary system, I’m inclined to support regional primaries as opposed to moving up the primary dates for individual states, with the regional primary dates spread out. If we do it by state, then everything will be bunched earlier and the emphasis would remain on the “battleground” states, thus giving people in non-battleground states a flimsy excuse to “opt out” of voting altogether. It would also make the fundraising more intense earlier in the process, leading to a situation with two main-party contenders decided in, say, March, slamming each other for months in attack TV ads to the point where people blow off the November election because they’re sick of the negativity.