Thursday, May 5, 2011

A Typo That Really Needs to Be Fixed

The AP is reporting that the House Committee Substitute to Missouri's SB 282 will move the Show Me state's presidential primary to March. That obviously doesn't jibe with what FHQ has been discussing.

From the Missouri Senate's page for SB 282:
The date of the presidential primary is moved from the first Tuesday after the first Monday in February to the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November.

But here's the relevant section from the bill (as has just been passed by the House):

Notwithstanding the provisions of subsection 1 of this section, an election for a presidential primary held pursuant to sections [115.755] 115.758 to 115.785 shall be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in March of each presidential election year.


For the record, whoever summarized the bill for the main bill page didn't do the best job. There seems to have been some confusion over the date of the presidential primary (mentions of March are completely excluded) and the primaries for municipal offices (to be held in November). And further for the record, FHQ is also at fault for having missed this discrepancy simply because the HCS version had not been posted when we first reported the November news back in mid-April. No, that's probably not an adequate defense.

In any event, the bill now heads back to the Senate, where it and the House version of the bill (HB 503) both seek to move the primary back to March. So, crisis averted.

...unless the Senate balks at that proposed change and maintains the non-compliant status quo -- a first Tuesday after the first Monday in February date.


No comments: