"The chairs of the state’s Democratic and Republican parties say they agree that the state’s presidential preference primaries should be state-run.
"The House Elections Committee held a hearing Tuesday afternoon on a bill that would make a test-run in March 2024 a permanent policy.
"Before that, the parities each held their own statewide caucuses or primaries to decide the preferred candidate for their delegates.
"GOP chair Danedri Herbert and Democratic chair Jeanna Repass both say state-run primaries will ensure Kansans have their voices heard."
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Noteworthy: HB 2447 would reinstate a state-run presidential primary in the Sunflower state and permanently schedule the election for the first Tuesday in March every four years.
Kansas legislators passed legislation in 2023 to reestablish a state-run presidential primary in the state, but it was a one-off, applying only to the 2024 cycle. As I wrote over at FHQ Plus around the time a number of bills were making the rounds in the statehouse...
Kansas has an interesting history with the presidential primary. Actually, Kansas has very little history with a presidential primary as the means of allocating delegates to the national conventions. Only twice in the post-reform era has the state officially held a primary: in 1980 and again in 1992. And from 1996 until 2012, the dance that the Kansas legislature would perform would be to not appropriate funds for a presidential primary election and change the date in the statute referencing the election to the next cycle. That routine ended for the 2016 cycle when the presidential primary was struck from the Kansas statutes altogether, eliminating the contest and the need to (not) fund it.
The current bill was brought forth on the request of the Kansas Republican Party Chair Danedri Herbert, is sponsored by the House Committee on Elections and has the support of both major parties in the state.
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