Texas primaries exclude too many voters, candidates. Here’s how we can fix them

Texas has one of the earliest primary dates in the nation — the first Tuesday in March. This is true in presidential years, when our Super Tuesday status puts us in a competitive position after the first few states vote. But it’s also true in midterm elections, when the early date serves less of a benefit.

But unlike general elections, in which voters are conditioned to identify November as a time for voting as much as they are December a time for holiday shopping, primaries are lesser-known elections and require more voter education and engagement.

Because of that, our early primary election date poses hurdles.

The first is that the period for candidates to file papers to be on the ballot is from November to December of the previous year. Thus candidates, donors, and political entities have to guess what the political winds will be one year out from a general election, and candidates have to launch their campaigns during the holiday season, when few people are paying attention.

The second hurdle is that t most of the people who are even aware of the filing period are political insiders, making it harder to draw new talent into our system of government.

But it wasn’t always this way.

Until 1986, Texas held primary elections in May. By 1988, it was moved to March to make the state more competitive in presidential primaries. But that also accelerated our local elections, an important cost-saving measure in a state of this size.

This is an important distinction because other early primary states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire, hold stand-alone presidential nominating contests while holding state and local primaries later in the year.

Texas can find a middle ground by moving the primary to April starting in 2022.

Moving our primary to sometime in April would shorten our general election season a bit, move the filing deadline for local candidates into January and still be early enough in the calendar to keep the state competitive in presidential primaries. This could help open the process up to more outsiders, and it would push the official kick-off of the campaign season past the holidays and into the new year.

There’s another benefit specific to the voters: Moving the primary back one month would allow more time for voter registration efforts, right as people start to tune into election season. Though Texas has seen an increase in voting in recent years, our state still has one of the lowest voter participation rates in the country. Offering a little more time to register could go a long way toward fixing that.

An April date would push runoff elections into June. But if we are changing the primary date then we should also consider changing the way we conduct primary elections. Specifically, we should get rid of undemocratic, low-turnout runoff elections and replace them with instant-runoff voting or ranked-choice voting. One primary and no runoff would mean one election date, saving the state and counties money associated with the cost of running two elections.

Ultimately, it will take varied efforts to increase voter turnout in Texas. But moving the primary back one month could be a singular way to make it easier for varied efforts to fall into place.

This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 8:04 AM.