Every year, the closer we get to the polling stations opening, the more pious the exhortations become.
Get out and vote. Do your duty. Show up. You can’t be part of the solution if you aren’t part of the process.
The Pennsylvania Legislature has to stop being part of the problem. A recent proposal definitely points to one way they are making things more complicated.
The House State Government Committee advanced a proposal Wednesday that, if passed, would make changes to coming elections. One would be to permit poll watchers to operate in counties other than their homes. The other would be to move the primary.
Wait, didn’t we already move the primary? Yes. And no. And that’s the problem.
The new proposal only complicates a situation that has existed for several years — all in the hopes of making Pennsylvania more relevant in the nomination cycle.
Pennsylvania’s normal primary is in mid-May. When voting for the governor, like this year, that’s not a big deal. It wouldn’t matter next year. It wouldn’t have mattered last year. That just leaves the presidential years, and that’s what the committee is looking to move.
And it’s exactly what the state already has moved. In presidential years, the primary has been moved up to April. Except when an unprecedented global health crisis hits and emergency procedures push it back to June, as happened in 2020.
The new proposal would move the primary up another month to March, making Pennsylvania more of a player in whittling broad fields of candidates down to single nominees. Frequently, the late primary has meant, by the time Pennsylvania voters hit the polls, Iowa and New Hampshire and other early states already have knocked out candidates and left the Keystone State with a choice that isn’t much of a choice.
“Right now, Pennsylvania’s primary really doesn’t matter in the scheme of national politics,” said committee chair Rep. Seth Grove, R- York.
One problem could be that, as elections get more contentious, with recounts becoming almost a default when it comes to tight races, county election workers aren’t done with the general from one year before they would have to start dealing with petitions for a moved-up presidential primary. One might assume Westmoreland County won’t even have hired a new election director by the 2024 primary at the glacial pace its replacement is going.
But another issue to consider is consistency. Everyone knows when the general election falls — the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. It is set by federal law and well established.
Moving Pennsylvania’s primary date every four years is ridiculous. Why just that year? Why keep it in May for the other three years of the cycle? If May works better, why not keep the date there in presidential years, too?
Yes, Pennsylvanians get the short end of the decisive stick in the presidential primary, but they remain a consistent decider when it comes down to the wire in November. The Keystone State definitely is not unimportant in the process.
There are things that need to be tweaked about the way we operate elections. Lessons should be learned from how things have gone in the past four — if not eight or more — years. Fix things. Make them run more smoothly.
But is playing with the calendar really that critical?
— Pittsburgh Tribune-Review via TNS
