Let's join Super Tuesday

Editorial by Fayetteville Observer, reprinted in Winston-Salem Journal, September 2, 2013.

It's possible to have too much of a good thing. And in the case of North Carolina's new, earlier-than-most presidential primary, that's what we've got.

By moving our presidential primary to one week after South Carolina's earliest-in-the-South vote, lawmakers gave us a pair of problems that cost power and money.

Both political parties have been irked by the rush of states to secure the nation's first primary. At the rate this is going, it won't be long before the primaries are more than a year before the presidential election - subjecting us to campaigns of unbearable length.

But there's another issue that will have a bigger effect on those of us who aren't party professionals - an extra primary is going to cost the state, and county boards of elections, millions of dollars.

We've long argued that North Carolina's mid-May primary was too late in presidential election years to generate much voter interest, save in those rare, too-close-to-call years - like 2008's duel between now-President Obama and Hillary Clinton.

But what we had in mind was moving the entire state primary, with all of its races, to March, on Super Tuesday, not all the way back to January.

State Rep. David Lewis, a Harnett County Republican, suggests that the General Assembly could solve both of its problems by moving the presidential primary to March. Lewis, who is a member of the Republican National Committee, said the purpose of the new law was "to signal that we wanted North Carolina to be a more relevant player in the selection of the nominees."

Joining Super Tuesday would achieve that, avert a delegate penalty and also offer a reasonable time to hold the rest of the state's primary as well.

We hope lawmakers decide to do that when they reconvene for their short session next year. Our primary should be early enough to matter, but not too early to make sense.