The decisions by Minnesota's DFL and Republican parties to hold their caucuses on a "Super Tuesday" this year didn't just make the state more relevant to the race for president. Packed precinct meetings, ballot shortages and general caucus chaos also sparked a statewide debate about whether to replace the caucuses with "Super Tuesday" primaries.
To legislators considering this change, please proceed with caution.
Primaries and caucuses each have strengths and weaknesses, so if lawmakers are serious about changing the state's electoral system, first they must agree on what precisely they want to accomplish. Then they should change only as much as needed to reach those objectives.
Without a doubt, casting a ballot for a presidential candidate was the driving force in caucus turnout March 1. Witness many examples locally and statewide of long lines at registration tables, confusion about meeting locations, and various precincts running out of official presidential ballots and creating more by tearing up whatever sheets of blank paper were on hand.
Indeed, it's that last approach that really seems to concern people now championing the jump from caucus to primary.
Yet caucuses themselves are about much more than casting that presidential ballot in a designated one-hour window. They have long been the format for getting grass-roots input aimed at shaping party platforms.
While a formal presidential primary — complete with a full day of registered voting and paid for with at least a couple million in taxpayer dollars — will yield more definitive and accurate vote totals for the presidential races, holding only that vote poses a drastic challenge to each party building its support from the ground up.
FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE ST. CLOUD TIMES
