Our readers vote to move the primary election
by Ed Wojcicki

One lesson in history (and in journalism and politics, for that matter) is that the big issues never go away. Especially those that are left unresolved.

So it is with the age-old idea of moving the Illinois primary election from March to some later month. The most common complaints about the March primary are that the general election campaign between March and November is just too long for candidates and voters and that candidates running for two-year terms have to file in December, which is 11 months before the November general election.

So we asked our readers in the March Question of the Month if they favored moving the primary election date, and if so, to what month. Only four out of 80 respondents said to keep the primary in March. The rest were evenly divided over whether to move the date to June, August or September, although a handful said to hold the primary in May.

Moving the primary date is not a new idea.

"I introduced a bill [proposing] a September primary my first term in the Illinois House in 1980," state Treasurer Judy Baar Topinka wrote. "I got nowhere with it. I still think September is best."

A Decatur reader outlined another concern about the length of today's campaigns: "Barely two months into his congressional term, Glenn Poshard is openly running for the Democratic nomination for governor in 1998. This system is absurd."

I have my own idea about when election day should be: April 16 — and I say this only partially tongue in cheek. The way I see it, this might solve our tax problems, too, because many reasonable people feel so angry when they write those checks to the government on April 15.

Our cover story this month, about welfare reform, deserves special mention. Three years ago, Donald Sevener of our staff wrote an in-depth two-part series on the implications of President Bill Clinton's vow to "end welfare as we know it." Sevener correctly reported then that the politically popular idea of limiting welfare recipients to two years to find work would cause great social problems because many people would not be equipped to find jobs and because suitable jobs might not be available.