Re: Primaries

The 2008 election cycle started far soon than it has in the past. This has caused several states to move up their primary dates. The idea behind moving a primary date up is to have a greater say in who becomes president. This is because candidates carry momentum from state to state. Two such states who jumped forward this election cycle were Florida and Michigan. However, the Democratic National Party did not want these states to jump forward in the primary process. This has caused the Democratic National Party to claim that Florida and Michigan will not have representatives at the National convention. However, as the primaries have progressed and the race has become closer and closer between Hillary and Obama it looks as if these disputed delegates will be important in the end. Furthermore, changes need to be made to the primary and caucus system. The original author suggested drawing out of a hat but this is completely absurd. 50 different state governments with at least 2 political parties will not and can not waste time drawing slips of paper to see who votes when. Several more likely and feasible solutions are either to have primaries by geographic regions. This would then allow each region a chance to be heard first on a rotating basis. Or theres always the other solution of just having one national primary day where voting takes place across the entire nation. Something similar to this was seen this year when 24 states held contests on February 5.