-By Warner Todd Huston
Estimates of voter participation proved that the February primary didn’t garner much interest. With less than 30 percent of registered voters turning out to nominate those that will run in November, moving the primary to February was obviously a bad move. Of course, this year’s primary was moved up to February in a 2007 bill that was meant to give Barack Obama a boost in 2008. But several bills meant to move the primary back to its traditional third Tuesday in March schedule have been introduced in Springfield.
State Rep. Elaine Nekritz (D, Northbrook) wants the primary moved right back to its old date in March and has introduced a bill in the Illinois House to do so.
It was passed the committee unanimously and heads to the full House soon.
Republican Tom Cross (Oswego) wants the date pushed back too and introduced a bill that will move the primary in presidential-election years to March with off years going to June.
Which ever bill ends up being the one that changes the primary to later in the year than February, it would be a good move. Many people I talked to at the end of January weren’t really even aware that the primary was coming up so fast. They’d barely begun to pay attention to politics after the holidays had passed.
The February primary date was a disaster and it needs to be changed back.
But the truth is, this whole episode shows the capriciousness of Democrats. They moved the primary solely to help Obama in 2008 and now they want to move it back? It shows that our system is meaningless to Democrats and that they’ll mess with it all they want just to win. The system itself is meaningless to them. Only winning matters.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. Warner is also the editor of the Cook County Page for RedCounty.com.
He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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