What’s really at stake in the Kansas presidential primary? More than you might think. | Opinion

Well, Kansas sure picked a heck of a year to bring back presidential primary elections.

On the Republican side, former President Donald Trump has already steamrolled pretty much all comers, and former South Carolina governor and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley is the last credible challenger standing — barely.

On the Democratic side, it’s President Joe Biden versus token opposition.

So why vote at all?

The best reason I can think of is so we can keep having primaries, a far better way for our small state’s voice to be heard on the national stage than the random caucus system that we’ve used, or skipped, every presidential election year except 1980 and 1992.

Primaries are more credible than caucuses and a lot fairer to the voters.

The problem with caucuses is that they only attract the most committed partisans who are willing to travel sometimes significant distances and spend the better part of a day politicking before casting a ballot (in the case of Republicans) or standing on one side of a caucus hall to be counted (in the case of Democrats).

Primaries are real elections, so if you’re elderly or disabled, military deployed overseas or otherwise unable to participate in a one-day caucus, you can vote by mail.

There will also be advance voting sites open in the upcoming March 19 primary, so you can cast a ballot at the election office in downtown Wichita from March 4 to March 18, and at 19 satellite sites that will be open March 12-16.

Also, the process will be handled by the professional vote-counters in election offices across the state, so we can have more confidence in the results.

I previously criticized the bill the Legislature passed establishing the primary, because it’s set up as a “preference primary,” where the state reports the results and the parties can choose to honor or ignore the wishes of the voters.

Since then, in fact just a couple of weeks ago, both parties have filed delegate-selection rules binding themselves to the public primary vote.

Democrats will commit their delegates to the party’s national convention based on the proportional share each candidate gets. On the Republican side, it’s winner-take-all.

A primary would have come in handy for the Democrats in 2008, when the Barack Obama vs. Hillary Clinton caucus was held during a blizzard, and hordes of Wichita voters had to stand outside for up to an hour waiting to get in because of a glitch in the registration lists. Or in the equally chaotic caucus of 2016, when it was Bernie Sanders vs. Clinton and an unforeseen surge of Sanders supporters overwhelmed caucus sites, forcing on-site organizers to change the rules as they went along.

Since the last primary in 1992, Republicans have skipped caucusing four times: 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2020.

The three times they did caucus, the proceedings were dominated by anti-abortion conservatives who picked the most religious-right candidates, who ended up losing the nomination to more-centrist rivals: Mike Huckabee over John McCain in 2008; Rick Santorum over Mitt Romney in 2012; Ted Cruz over Trump in 2016.

So here’s who we get to choose from this time around:

Republicans on the ballot are Trump; Haley; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who’s dropped out; and Ryan Binkley, founder of a Texas investment firm and a Christian pastor.

On the Democratic side, there’s Biden; Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips; author and spiritual advisor Marianne Williamson; and Jason Michael Palmer, CEO of an investment firm and a former executive with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

I’m not going to fudge you, the pickings are slim. And the near-certain outcome for the November general election is a Biden-Trump rematch, barring Biden’s age catching up with him in a bad way, or Trump getting disqualified over the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

But I’m still going to implore you to vote.

Because if nobody shows for this primary, it will play into the hands of party hacks who like deciding for you who Kansas is going to support. If we don’t vote, it could be another 32 years before we get another chance.

This time around, you’re not voting for candidates — you’re voting for democracy.

And that is worth your time.