Letter: Date of primary leads to apathy

Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2002 | 9:08 a.m.

Jon Ralston, while always passionate about the political process, has stumped me with his Aug. 18 column that condemned early voting, "Election officials foster apathy." I think Jon is overlooking the real problem engendering voter apathy -- Nevada's September primaries.

Candidates from the same party with presumably similar political ideologies are all trying to target the voters from their parties for an endless seven to eight months. Candidates who do not have a primary put their campaigns on idle during this time waiting for the endless primary to be over. As a voter, and also as the director of government relations for the Nevada State Education Association, I am busy sorting out which candidate is from which party and consciously thinking, "OK, that candidate won't be on the ballot until November."

Then, in Nevada, we schedule this important election on the Tuesday after a major three-day holiday weekend. Yeah, people are really paying attention to all that last-minute campaigning for the primary.

The biggest insult to Nevada voters, though, is that after listening to primary candidates have at each other without much discussion of the issues at all, they are given two months to discern the major differences of the candidates who will be on the ballot in November.

While the Nevada State Education Association hasn't taken an official position on the subject of a primary date, I believe that the primary election date should be moved up to June or July and let this great human endeavor, politics, have the time needed to allow the dynamics of political campaigns to occur. Please release me from primary purgatory!

DEBBIE CAHILL Editor's note: The writer is director of government relations for the Nevada State Education Association.