Republicans Consider Controversial Change to Primary Calendar

[babylonsister]

Republicans Consider Controversial Change to Primary Calendar
At Summer Meeting, RNC Mulls Pushing Back Primaries, Rewarding Proportional Voting
By Jesse Zwick 8/4/10 7:05 AM


Today, Republican Party officials representing every state and territory in the country convene in Kansas City for the Republican National Committee’s annual summer meeting. Generally, the event is a chummy and predictable affair, an opportunity for attendees to hobnob between conferences. But the upcoming four days are shaping up to be tense, as party officials find themselves divided over a proposal to reform the GOP’s presidential nomination process for the 2012 election.

On Friday, attendees plan to decide whether to implement new rules encouraging states to push primary votes back from January and February to the late winter and early spring months. Only the traditional lead states — Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada — would be permitted to hold their primaries in February, but not in January, as they currently do. States holding contests in March, the most popular month for primaries, would have to award delegate votes in some form of proportional system, rather than winner-takes-all.

The changes, and the imminent vote on them, are furrowing brows. “There is concern about what the ramifications would be of change — of any change,” notes one RNC official with serious qualms with the proposal. (Each state and U.S. territory has three RNC officials — a chair, one committeeman and one committeewoman — all of whom are eligible to vote at the summer meeting.) Indeed, a number of RNC officials have raised concerns, in both public and private, about everything from which states get to go first to whether the changes might privilege certain presidential hopefuls over others.

RNC officials are annoyed by the up-or-down nature of the vote. If the proposal gets the nod of two-thirds of attendees, it passes wholesale. Otherwise, it does not. Moreover, they are positively anxious about the possibility of throwing the 2012 presidential nominating process into even greater chaos than in 2008. Thus, a growing number of RNC members are promising to vote against the proposed changes, jeopardizing the chances that the long-touted reforms will pass.

more...

http://washingtonindependent.com/93599/republicans-consider-controversial-change-to-primary-calendar

[pruple]

1. K&R

[KharmaTrain]

2. They Should Move Their Primaries To December, 2012

Do us all a favor. :rofl:

I have to admit I am very much in favor in moving the primaries back into the Spring and cut back on the endless, tedious and expensive dog and pony primary system we have now. I'd go a step further...move them to June...save even more time and verbage.

[bluestateguy]

3. Sounds good to me

Gives Obama more time to stash away a huge pile of money for the general election while the enemy party slugs it out among themselves.