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 The Chronicle welcomes you online! Please feel free to respond to these editorials or letters to the editor by sending your letters to the editor.

We condense letters; most, as published, won't exceed 300 words. A letter must include the writer's name and city, which will be published, and an address and telephone number for verification, which will not be published. Writers may be limited to one letter every 30 days. Open letters, letters to third parties and poetry are not considered. Letters from people living outside the Chronicle's circulation area usually are not considered.

End primary madness

Web posted March 20, 1999

Augusta Chronicle Editorial Staff

The South's Super Tuesday presidential primary is being stepped on by other big states. Now Georgia, South Carolina and other states of the old Confederacy are trying to get out of the way by moving their dates up again.

This whole process is getting out of hand. How long before presidential primaries are held a couple of months after a general election?

First a little history. In the 1980s, Southern voters were discouraged that they had so little input on the selection of political parties' presidential nominees. In response, Georgia lawmakers voted to join five other Dixie states, plus two border states, to hold their primaries on ``Super Tuesday'' -- about a month after New Hampshire's traditional first-in-the-nation primary.

South Carolina's primary, held the Sunday before Super Tuesday, served as a harbinger of what was to come a few days later. Super Tuesday, coming before other big state primaries, was a success.

It brought more candidates South to campaign than ever before -- and those who did the best picked up a lot of momentum, not to mention delegates, as they headed out of Dixie to campaign elsewhere.

But several of those large states, upset the South got the jump on them, moved their primaries up, too. In fact, former Gov. Zell Miller got Georgia to further move up its 1992 primary date to keep ahead of the pack, as did South Carolina.

Now the pack is closing in again with New York, California and a host of other large Eastern, Midwest and Western states slating their 2000 presidential primaries on March 10, the same day as Georgia.

This has prompted Gov. Roy Barnes to consider pushing back the date a week to keep Georgia a leader in the nominating system. There's not time enough left in this session to get the job done, but if the General Assembly acts quickly when it convenes next January, the date still could be changed in time.

South Carolina is already moving to reschedule its 2000 primary to Feb. 26, the earliest ever.

The insanity has got to stop. What's needed is for states to organize themselves regionally -- which is already being done to a large extent -- and then negotiate a schedule to hold regional primaries.

Different regions could take turns every four years rotating their primary dates from first to last. This would be fair and -- most important -- sane.