One way to avoid these primary date contoversies...

The constitution says nothing about parties. They are private organizations, not part of the government.

I have never been comfortable with primary votes appearing on official ballots, particularly alongside real votes like ballot initiatives. (Why should a primary voting pool be affected by whether everyone hates gay marriage or highway taxes or whatever.) I am uncomfortable with all codification of party in any laws, rules or regulations. I'm not comfortable with rules that acknowledge party control of legislative bodies. The party with the majority will elect the officers in practice, but why codify it?

Does it make sense for people to register with the government as republicans and democrats? How can keeping track of that be a legitimate governmental role?

In general, political party should be like religion... you belong to the party you want (if any), and the government has no business favoring two major parties any more than it should favor one party.

Sometimes the intermeshing of government and party reminds me of our current public attitude that the First Amendment only provides freedom of religion as long as you are a Christian (or maybe a Jew)... you can be a Catholic or a Methodist, or maybe even a Mormon... you know, the "real" religions.

The only way a state legislature can mess with any party's primary (as seems to be the case in Florida) is if the party has entered into a cozy relationship with the state letting the state run their aspects of their primary.

So let the parties pick their nominees however they wish, entirely on their own. It could be done via caucuses, mail, the internet or a state convention.... whatever. A show of hands, the magic eight-ball... seriously, it's none of my concern how parties pick their candidates unless I'm a member of that party. If the republicans want to pick a candidate through an arm-wrestling tournament that's their business. But use something using no state facilities, state voting machines, etc. (Even if the parties pay for them.)

That way, the national party could arange its entire primary process however it wished without the interference of 50 different state laws.

I am a big D Democrat, but I am also a little D democrat, and I think non-affiliated voters should be on a level playing field with everyone else. We all know from Florida 2000 that state law required that the presidential candiate from the party of the governor must appear first on the ballot. What the Hell is that? The names should appear alphabetically or randomly or however, but not with regard to party, let alone with regard to what party won the last election!

It is so bad that some state (Indiana?) does, or used to, have a rule where some sum of state money went to whichever state political party won the governorship. If an independent won, would he get to pocket the money personally? Who knows... that system pretty much precluded ever finding out.