On Friday, Governor Jay Nixon vetoed an omnibus elections bill that would have provided for special elections for statewide vacancies, cancelled uncontested municipal elections, and moved the Presidential primary to March.

Barring a veto override, Missouri’s primary is scheduled for February 7th, 2012. A week before New Hampshire hoped to hold their primary.

So in other words, New Hampshire’s going to hold their primary in January if Missouri and Florida and other states don’t kiss the ring and move their primaries into March.

What could Missouri do (short of mistakenly overriding a veto)… I don’t think a special session would be cost efficient, unless they pair it with other stuff that the General Assembly didn’t do this Spring (granted, that involves the risk of having the General Assembly in session). The MOGA can’t really expect to change the date in January 2012, because the General Assembly doesn’t do anything in January anyways. So, the options are limited.

In all likelyhood, the Missouri Presidential primaries will be penalized, and the primaries might mean a bit less than they usually do. I don’t know if there’s a requirement in state law saying that the Preference primary is linked to delegate selection, if there’s no requirement, they could do a meaningless primary and caucuses in March.

So, if we just keep this quiet, maybe New Hampshire will just not notice that Missouri will hold our primary a week before “First in the Nation” New Hampshire. But in all likelyhood, New Hampshire and Iowa will be moving their events to January thanks to the Missouri General Assembly trying to move the primary date in an omnibus bill instead of just putting the move in it’s own bill.