Lori Sturdevant: A primary election before the leaves turn?

Count me among the fans of Minnesota politics who have at one time or another opined that an earlier primary-election date would serve this democracy well.

We may be about to get our wish -- or, at least, a move in our direction. Courtesy of a shove from the federal Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act, signed by President Obama on Oct. 28, the Legislature will be asked next month to move the state primary from mid-September to the second Tuesday in August. With bipartisan support for the idea now believed to be in hand, the skids look greased for enactment.

The case that will be made on the House and Senate floors will be all about aiding the state's absentee voters. An August primary will assure those voters the new federally required minimum of 45 days to receive, complete and return their ballots, compared with the 30 days the current calendar allows. (But beware of close primary elections. A recount could easily still run afoul of the new federal law.)

Though Minnesota tripled its rate of counting absentee ballots from military voters in 2008 over 2006, far too many ballots still arrived too late to be counted. Moving the primary to August should change the absentee-voting success rate for the better.

That's reason enough for a calendar change. But it wasn't a reason on reformers' radar -- not before the 2008 Senate recount revealed an unacceptable number of absentee-ballot rejections. Instead, the case gingerly made for an earlier primary was usually about helping voters and delegates make better decisions.

Longer general-election campaigns would be less negative and shrill, went the claim. A compressed endorsement and primary season would force candidates to campaign among delegates and primary voters at the same time. Delegates would be able to see campaigns in action before they endorsed.

What wasn't always said plainly should be laid on the table now: An earlier primary will also diminish the clout of political party endorsing conventions. It shifts political power from delegates to primary voters.

Moving the primary ahead only one month might not produce much obvious change. A move to June would be better. Still, it may not be a coincidence that gubernatorial primary talk is louder than usual in both the DFL and GOP parties this winter.

Both parties have prominent players (two former U.S. senators come to mind) capable of taking their candidacies directly to their party's primary voters. One reason for them to feel emboldened to do so is that an August primary would give them four additional postprimary weeks to unite their parties and hone their messages for the larger general-election audience.

Knowing that well-known candidates will be in the primary pool regardless of what the state conventions do is bound to change the behavior of other candidates. One, DFLer Matt Entenza, already says he won't abide by the endorsement if other prominent candidates don't.

Another DFLer, Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner, announced on Jan. 5 that she'll carry on through the primary. Allowing 1,200 DFL convention delegates to decide her campaign's fate is "too politically limiting," she said.

"The endorsement process doesn't provide a good opportunity for a candidate with my kind of profile," Gaertner said.

One might think that after spending more than a year chasing an endorsement she now acknowledges she won't get, a disillusioned Gaertner would be ready to scrap endorsements entirely. She's not. Neither am I.

She sees value in the face-to-face campaigning that an endorsement bid requires. I see something positive for democracy when citizens can do more to shape their government than simply vote.

The endorsement process should be reformed, not rejected, Gaertner said. She cited ideas advanced 15 years ago by a bipartisan commission headed by then-Secretary of State Joan Growe. Among them:

•A June primary.

•Conventions empowered to function as gatekeepers to the primary ballot. They could advance to the ballot those candidates able to surpass a 15 or 20 percent threshold vote.

Those changes would keep party conventions relevant but would change their role. The conventions would function as candidate screening panels, rather than kingmakers.

It's been 40 years since a DFL convention endorsed a nonincumbent who went on to be governor. The GOP has pulled it off only twice in the same 40 years, in 1978 and 2002. Maybe an earlier primary will help the parties face up to the fact that trying to play kingmaker hasn't been working so well for them.