Would A Single May Primary Be So Bad ?

By now you probably know that the primary voting for Texas has become a real mess. The Republican-dominated legislature drew new district lines for U.S. House and state legislative races -- and those new districts ignored the huge rise in population of Hispanics in the state. Instead of creating new Hispanic districts as they should have done, the Republicans reverted back to the old practice of gerrymandering to make sure that Republicans would be the electoral winners for the next 10 years.

The Republicans knew they were violating the Voting Rights Act with their new district lines, so they decided to skip the Justice Department (which is required to approve of Texas redistricting) and go straight to federal court. They figured they had a better chance with the federal court, since it had two Republican appointees and one Democratic appointee. But they were wrong. That court ruled they had violated the law and redrew the district lines.

The Republicans could have accepted that, since the court-drawn lines would probably have still given them majorities -- at least for a few more years. But they decided to go for the whole ball of wax, and appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. And amazingly, the court decided to hear the case. It is scheduled for a January 9th hearing. Now no one knows whether the Republican district lines or the court's district lines will be approved -- it could go either way.


The problem now is that Texas had their primary scheduled for March, and waiting for a Supreme Court decision in January means their will not be time to prepare for a March primary. There must be time for people to declare their candidacy, the ballots to be printed, and the ballots to be mailed to Texans living outside the state (like soldiers). That simply can't be done in time for a March primary. So now the politicians are talking about having two primaries -- one in March for the presidential contest and another in May for all other races. But there are a couple of problems with that:

1. Primaries are not cheap, especially in a state as large as Texas. And having two primaries is going to be twice as expensive as one. This is a problem for a state with the financial problems that Texas has.
2. A second primary for U.S. House and state races is probably not going to draw near as many voters as the presidential primary. Traditionally, it is the presidential race that draws the most voters (as we can see by how much the vote drops off in non-presidential election years).

There is an easy solution to both of these problems -- just have one primary in May. I know some Republicans may think this will give them less of a say in who their nominee will be, but I don't think that's true this year. I think the Republican primary will go much later this year before a winner is decided (like the Democrats in 2008), and Texas Republicans may actually have more of a say in who the nominee will be in May than in March. Gingrich and Romney look like they are going to be slugging it out for a while, and Paul may take just enough votes (and delegates) to string the race out for a long time.

The other problem with a single May primary, one that will affect both political parties, is that the time between the primary and the state conventions in June would be severely compressed. It would not leave a lot of time to hold county and regional conventions to choose the state delegates. But I think this could be done with just a modicum of competent leadership (and that's all that both parties in Texas seem to have).

Now that the Supreme Court has put itself into Texas redistricting mess, I think a single primary in May would be the reasonable solution. It would be a lot cheaper and easier than having two separate primaries.

NOTE -- Some Democrats are now tossing around the idea of a single primary in April. That could also work, if the Supreme Court doesn't wait too long to issue their decision.