Hey y’all… my sources tell me that SB 113 made it out of the last California Legislative committee yesterday. It will be on the governator’s desk by the end of the week. In case you’re not an election geek like me, SB 113 would change the presidential primary in California to the “first Tuesday in February in any year evenly divisible by the number 4.” The primary used to be in June, at the same time as state primaries and local elections.
So, what does this mean for you? It means that California will have more of a voice in presidential elections. However, some states are going to be jealous of the attention our large population will get during primary campaigning. To be sure, the schedule of when presidential primary elections are “allowed” to happen is tightly constrained by political parties.
What does this mean for election officials? Lots and lots and lots of stress. This will mean they’ll have four elections in one year (November 2007, February 2008, June 2008 and November 2008). Election officials and their staff typically work 12-hour days, weeks on end, without days off to prepare for elections. Sigh. We reap what we sow yo.
Interesting. What exactly bars all states from moving their primaries to January 1st of an election year? Why didn’t anyone think of this before? And is there a reason the language specifies “year evenly divisible by the number 4″ instead of saying something like “year of the presidential election”?
Well, the way they do it, if a state were to move it into January (and it’s not one of the four traditional first primary states (IA, NV, NH, SC)) their delegates to the national convention get no votes (which means they effectively wouldn’t be able to choose the nominee for their party). Complicated, yes.
I don’t know why it says divisible by four… obviously, those are (typically) leap years. The constitution allows Congress to choose the date of the presidential election (technically when the electoral college chooses the president)… but the election has to happen on the same day everywhere. They did this last in 1845 with 3 USC 1 which doesn’t say “divisible by four” but does say “in every fourth year succeeding every election of a President and Vice President.” So, if Congress were to change when the President were elected this law (and all the others in CA that use the “divisible by four” language) would have to be changed.
Even after asking some election law peeps, I still haven’t figure this out. Oh well.