Voting in December?

In Friday's Washington Post, Joel Achenbach reported that New Hampshire's Secretary of State Bill Gardner is considering scheduling the New Hampshire primary December! As the legally mandated dictator of the primary date, Gardner said that he is watching to see what Michigan and Nevada decide to do and will make his decision sometime after the close of the filing period for the candidates on November 2.

The controversy arises from a New Hampshire state law that says that the Secretary of State may select any day he or she chooses as long as it is at least one week before any "similar election." While this never presented any significant problems in the past, many state lawmakers have grown sick of sitting idly by while New Hampshire is catered to by a bunch of political superstars all of whom are potentially the next president. Not to mention the tourism revenue it brings in. In an attempt to get a little piece of the action this year, many states have decided to move their state's primary up to January or February. Then, when it looked like all hell was going to break loose from all the states changing their date, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) stepped in and said that only Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina were allowed to hold primaries before February 5th.

At first, I was a bit troubled by the DNC's ruling, as I have always thought that the tradition of New Hampshire holding the first primary discriminated against the other states and because it created a snowball effect for the winner, giving them an unfair advantage in the elections that followed. I thought that this would have been one step towards leveling the playing field. 

After reading Achenbach's article, my first thought was that if New Hampshire held their primaries in December, it would just make matters worse and further solidify the idea that each winner would likely go on to become their party's nominee. However, as I read the article again, I became less pessimistic about the effect of a December primary when I began to think about Gardner's notion that "an earlier date might allow a candidate who did poorly to regroup."  

This made sense! If there was a full month between when New Hampshire voted and the next primary and two months between them and Super Tuesday, all of the candidates could reorganize and get themselves ready for the long haul. In fact, a December primary could disestablish New Hampshire's influence on the rest of the primary. When you take into account that there are 56 days and two of the biggest holidays of the year between December 11 and February 5th (Super Tuesday), I think it is easy to see how New Hampshire could end up having very little impact on the rest of the primaries.

So, as someone who wants New Hampshire to have as little influence as possible this election year, cheers to December 11!