The DC Traveler

The Not So "Super" Tuesday

by Jon on February 5th, 2008

Super Tuesday is not so super, at least not in the DC area. 

While over half of the national presidential convention delegates from 22 states are up for grabs today, local area voters get to watch the excitement, drama and bedlam from the sidelines. 

Here in the DC metro area (DC, Virginia and Maryland), voters get to wait one week, until Tuesday, Feb. 12th to vote in our local presidential primaries. 

Can you imaging if each of the 22 Super Tuesday state’s primaries were held on a separate day?  That would mean 22 more “critical make or break battleground states” as reported by the media. Each followed 22 separate smiling victory speeches or 22 “we’re determined to do better in the next state” concession speeches… from EACH candidate.  Perhaps Super Tuesday is a good idea, at least to give the political speech writers a break.

Here’s some of the details of local primaries.

District of Columbia Primary
Polling hours 7:00 a.m. -  8:00 p.m.

• Democrat - Advisory Primary - 38 delegates
• Republican - Winner Take All Primary - 19 delegates

Primary Type - DC’s primary is closed, meaning only registered members of each party may vote in that party’s primary. So in DC, Independents are not allowed to vote unless they declare a party of choice.

Virginia Primary
Polling hours - 6:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.

• Democrat - Proportional - 101 delegates
• Republican - Winner Take All - 63 delegates

Primary Type - Virginia is an open primary - all registered voters can participate in either primary, but only one.

A couple months ago, the Virginia Republican Party was considering asking voters in the Republican primary to sign a pledge to support the Republican candidate, who ever it would be, in order to vote in the Republican primary. Wisely, they dropped the idea.

Maryland Primary 
Polling hours 7:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.

• Democrat - Proportional - 99 delegates
• Republican - Winner Take All - 37 delegates

Primary Type - Maryland’s primary is also closed.

Here’s a link to the definitions of some of the terms and type of primaries.

Map courtesy of WashingtonPost.com

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