Voting to be heard
Monday, December 4, 2006
SHOULD KANSAS go back to running a presidential primary? Ron Thornburgh, the secretary of state, thinks so.
Critics say a primary, which would cost about $2.5 million, does not make much sense. Kansas does not have that many electoral votes and has a habit of voting for whoever is nominated by the Republicans. Why go to the trouble and expense for a result that will be ignored by the rest of the nation?
But there are several good reasons to have a Kansas primary. If a primary is run early enough in the year, it can have a magnified effect on the national race. How many electoral votes does New Hampshire have? It has four votes, two less than Kansas. Yet the New Hampshire primary is still considered to be a powerful force in the selection of candidates by the two big parties.
The problem with past attempts to run primaries in Kansas has been that the election would have been held so late that the Democrats and Republicans would already have effectively chosen their candidates, making a Kansas vote a futile exercise in “me-too” politics.
Without a primary, Kansas voters are standing on the sidelines in presidential politics. Voters in other states choose the candidates, and all Kansans can do is vote to ratify those choices on Election Day. That leaves voters in the state feeling disenfranchised.
Primaries matter more in some years than in others, and 2008 is one of the years in which they will matter the most. With no sitting president or vice president in the race, candidate selection in both parties will be wide open for the first time in many years. Candidates will be chosen by voters, not by party officials.
Kansas voters could be a part of that process.
Thornburgh wants to schedule a primary for soon after the New Hampshire primary and the Iowa caucuses. To give the Kansas primary added punch, he suggests scheduling the primary in concert with other Midwestern states, encouraging candidates to campaign actively in the region and increasing the potential importance of the results.
Thornburgh’s proposal makes sense, provided:
• That the primary is early enough to carry some weight in the selection process.
• That nearby states agree to hold primaries on the same day.
Under those conditions, Kansas voters would be participants, rather than observers, in the selection of the next president.
That would be worth $2.5 million.