New Hampshire Mulls December Primary

New Hampshire primary voters could head to the polls as early as Dec. 11 in an unprecedented move to maintain the state’s first-in-the-nation status.

Jim Splaine, the state legislator responsible for the law mandating that New Hampshire vote first, is actively campaigning for a vote on that date, The Washington Post reports.

Splaine explains it on his blog hosted by the site Blue Hampshire: “A N.H. primary on or around Dec. 11 would encourage the presidential candidates and their campaigns to spend intensive, quality time here for all of November into the first week or two of December. We could ask for nothing better for democracy than having some concentrated time with the candidates — face to face, eye to eye, one-on-one, New Hampshire-style.”

The primary calendar confusion began when a number of states, including Michigan and Florida, moved to leapfrog New Hampshire. With the Michigan contest set for Jan. 15, New Hampshire, under its law, must vote no later than Jan. 8. But that date would fall only three days after Iowa’s expected caucus date — too little time for candidates to relocate their campaigns.

“When the Democratic National Committee began playing games with the schedule some two years ago, and a lot of people said New Hampshire wouldn't survive their sanctions, I said we would,” Splaine writes in his blog. “We’d remain first.”