Delaying primary would weaken Pennsylvania voice
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At the Allegheny County elections division, staffers are calling poll workers and reminding them of the April 24 primary. Competitive bids are out for hauling machines to polling places. The schools, churches, apartment complexes and other buildings that host polls are being reminded, too.
There may be another round of calls this spring telling them to forget it.
With the district lines for the state's House and Senate seats in flux after rejection by the state Supreme Court, Republicans have raised the possibility of pushing back the April 24 date.
Such a move could sacrifice any chance that Pennsylvania voters have a major say in the choice of the GOP presidential nominee this spring, but it would serve Republicans in another way.
Delaying the primary could buy time for GOP leaders who want state elections held under new lines that combine Democratic seats in Western Pennsylvania or move them to the east. They went to federal court Monday seeking an injunction preventing the state from using old lines this year, but Senior U.S. District Judge R. Barclay Surrick did not immediately rule on the request.
The battles come during a cycle that happens only every 20 years, when redistricting and presidential years coincide. Similar battles over congressional lines in Texas pushed back its primaries by one month to April 3 and on Monday were in danger of being delayed again.
Such jockeying over primary dates at this point in the calendar is rare. While the Pennsylvania fight is over state government elections, it directly affects the presidential and congressional races sharing the April 24 ballot.
"Presidential primary movement is common. Presidential primary movement in the midst of the primary calendar is not," Josh Putnam, a visiting assistant political science professor at Davidson College in North Carolina, wrote in an email.
Pennsylvania usually holds its primaries the third week of May but moves them to late April in presidential years. Mr. Putnam, who runs the primary and delegate-tracking website Frontloading HQ, said the state was poised to have a say this year in a GOP nominee, possibly by pushing frontrunner Mitt Romney past the 1,144 delegates needed to lock up the party's nomination.
"To move back beyond that date, then, would mean Pennsylvania would be pushed out of the window of decisiveness in this race," he said.
A four-member majority of the state Supreme Court issued an 87-page opinion Friday that ordered the Legislative Reapportionment Commission to redraw the state districts and pay more attention to the "contiguity, compactness and the integrity of political subdivisions." In the meantime, it has ordered that the current districts drawn a decade ago stay in place.
First Published February 7, 2012 12:00 am
