Vt’s primary may be influential, after all

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For months, many political observers have doubted that Vermont’s presidential primary would have much influence on the nominating process.

But as voters head to the polls in New Hampshire, a scenario is developing that could raise Vermont’s national profile.

VPRs Bob Kinzel reports:

(Kinzel) The conventional wisdom among political pundits this fall was that one candidate in both the Democratic and Republican parties would emerge as the clear winner following the results of the Super Tuesday primaries on February 5th.

That’s when 21 states, in virtually every region of the country, will hold their primaries. The group includes a number of big states including New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, California and Illinois.

Middlebury College political science professor Eric Davis says the results from Iowa and the projected outcome in New Hampshire, make it more likely that several candidates in each party will still be in the race after February 5th:

(Davis) "I think it’s more likely that the Republican race would be unsettled by early March than the Democratic race, but if we had an active race in either party the Vermont primary will make a difference. There will be more activity, more organization, more advertising. We might even see a few candidates make quick visits to Vermont, maybe flying into the Burlington airport – do a press conference at the airport, a couple of events within an hour of Burlington and then go on to another state that’s also voting on March 4th."

Four states will hold a primary on March 4th: Vermont, Rhode Island, Ohio and Texas. Secretary of State Deb Markowitz thinks a contested primary would be good for the state:

(Markowitz) "We’ll see if we actually get some candidates coming to Vermont. It would be fun to be able to show the world that we’re really not so different than New Hampshire – you can actually talk to people here – and have to go to our cafes and our city halls."

Markowitz says the current front loaded primary schedule is a "dysfunctional way" to choose a presidential nominee and she strongly supports a plan backed by the National Association for Secretaries of State to hold a system of rotating regional primaries beginning in 2012:

(Markowitz) "It makes sense because in many places the media market is a regional market – it’s no longer just a state market or one urban area and it would lower the cost of running those campaigns and really let the rest of the country have a turn at meeting those candidates first up and influencing, you know, what’s a very important decision for the country."

Since Vermont doesn’t have a system of party registration, voters can choose to participate in either the Republican or the Democratic presidential primary on Town Meeting Day.

But there’s a special twist – voters must verbally indicate to local election officials which party’s ballot they want to receive – this is a different process than the one used for state primary elections where voters never declare which party’s ballot they’re using.

For VPR News I’m Bob Kinzel in Montpelier.

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