The presidential primary in Georgia is Tuesday, which has been dubbed Super Tuesday, with nearly half the nation casting its votes for the parties' nomination in one day.
To date, a handful of states have made their choices, and only a few of those on either side have been strongly contested. Yet the field already has been pared to two strong contenders in each party.
Thus, waiting in line to vote on Super Tuesday may be worth your time if you planned all along to vote for John McCain, Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. If you prefer Mike Huckabee or Ron Paul, your candidate remains in the race, though their chances have faded considerably.
But if you had planned to cast your lot with a handful of early candidates who already have exited the stage, it's time for Plan B. If you're a follower of John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson, Tom Tancredo, Duncan Hunter, Joe Biden or Chris Dodd, you never really got a chance to cast a vote in a competitive race for the candidate of your choice. They remain on the ballot, but their campaigns are toast, shuttered up like a store gone out of business.
In fact, some voters who went to the polls during the early voting period last week in Georgia and elsewhere may have voted for Edwards or Giuliani, only to watch their candidates bow out a day or so later. That can't feel good. In a year when the primary election has sparked enormous interest and huge voter turnouts in the early primaries, this isn't the best way to keep people fired up for the general election to come.
In years past, the primary and caucus schedule was set by the national parties to create some semblance of order. This year, many states sought to play leap-frog and subvert the process by jumping ahead in line to vote early.
Two states that did so, Michigan and Florida, were punished by the national parties for breaking in line, from losing a percentage of their delegates (Republican) to losing them all (Democratic). The Democratic candidates in those states refused to campaign, leaving their voters left out completely.
Because of the rush to vote early, the traditional campaign kickoff states of Iowa and New Hampshire felt obligated to do the same to keep their place at the head of the line. So Iowa caucus voters wound up voting three days into the new year, New Hampshire just five days later.
Now 24 states vote Tuesday in what is all but a national primary. The 20 or so states left on the calendar may find themselves with even fewer candidates to select than we have on Tuesday.
Nearly everyone agrees that something should be done to streamline the primary process and add some common-sense order to how nominees are chosen. The problem, though, is that the primary dates are left up to the states, and getting them all to agree to an orderly system is akin to herding cats.
It's also important to remind ourselves that the primary election remains specifically a party function. There is nothing in the Constitution pertaining to it, nor any statute granting us the right to vote in a primary. In fact, it wasn't long ago when primaries were mere "beauty contests" to indicate popular choices to a state's delegates. The decision on nominees was left up to party operatives and insiders, made in the proverbial smoke-filled back rooms.
No one wants to turn back the clock to those days. Voters now want to select the nominees on their own. But we need a better way. To do so will take pressure on state legislatures and party officials to cooperate in creating a more sensible process that gives more states a full slate of candidates to choose from.
The best idea being floated is to separate the primaries into regional contests, in which groups of states in a certain area would vote on the same date. Candidates could focus their campaigns in a concentrated area during that time, allowing for more "retail" politics, face-to-face contact with prospective voters. As it is now, only Iowa and New Hampshire are afforded that luxury.
After one region has voted, the campaign would move to the next region scheduled on the calendar, and on down the list. The regions would rotate the voting order from election to election, giving each a chance to be the early player in the race.
Such a system would avoid the front-loaded process we have now in which states are tempted to jump ahead of the others. It would avoid the kind of Super Tuesday crush of states that puts too much emphasis on one day. Candidates could focus campaigns on one part of the country in turn, making better use of their time and money.
On paper, it sounds good. The trick is getting two parties in all 50 states to agree to it, and to which states would be lumped together in a region. To do so will take the Democratic and Republican national parties to join together to work out the bugs and keep everyone in line. If just a few states try to jump ship and go on their own, the whole idea would fall apart.
But it's worth trying. Too many voters who want to take part in the nominating process are forced to choose from a slimming slate of candidates, or are left out of the mix completely. If the goal is to keep more voters active and involved, we need to devise a way to give them influence in the early going. The best way to do that is to work behind the scenes to change the primary system and come up with a calendar that makes sense.