Do Kansans want their presidential primary to matter? Two suggestions will make a difference.

The 2024 presidential election is set. Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump.

In an extremely rare occurrence, Americans will get a replay between the two major party candidates from the previous election. The last time this happened was in 1956 when the Democrats returned Adlai Stevenson for a rematch with the 1952 winner, Dwight Eisenhower.

The last time a presidential election featured an incumbent president who had lost and then returned was 1892, when Grover Cleveland — who had lost re-election to Benjamin Harrison in 1888 – came back and defeated Harrison four years later.

While many people are complaining about this 2020 redux, majorities within both parties were content with their veteran (very, very veteran) choices.

On the Democratic side — in contrast to 1980 when a formidable Ted Kennedy challenged sitting President Jimmy Carter and 1968 when Eugene McCarthy took on President Lyndon Johnson — there was never even a whiff of possibility that a legitimate and well-known candidate would challenge Biden.

The president cruised through the 2024 primaries essentially unopposed, a victory sealed up from the start.

On the Republican side, there was at least some early competition for Trump courtesy of Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Tim Scott and Nikki Haley. After Iowa went for Trump by more than 50%, only Haley was left. She departed after the Super Tuesday primaries on March 5.

So we cast our eyes to November and ... what? Kansas has a presidential preference primary on March 19? An election the state is running and bankrolling to the tune of $1 million to $2 million when, in the immortal words of Bill Murray from the classic film “Meatballs”: “It just doesn’t matter!” Yes.

Kansas’ political parties have always had to select delegates to their party conventions but typically in the past conducted these elections themselves in order to save the state money. Republicans held some exciting caucuses in 2012 and 2016 that featured multiple candidate visits to Kansas while the Democrats ran an innovative vote-by-mail primary in 2020 that used rank choice voting.

However, in 2023, the Legislature decided that 2024 was the year for a full-on state-funded primary with the caveat of no unaffiliated voters allowed. There would be excitement, candidate visits, democracy in action. It hasn’t turned out that way.

As Brad Cooper, of the Sunflower State Journal, reported: “Kansas Republicans have now turned the primary contest into whether the state can post the highest percentage of votes for Trump in the country. ‘The state of Alabama currently leads the nation with 83.2% voting for Donald Trump in their Republican Primary Election,’ the Republicans said in a Friday email to supporters. ‘Kansas can beat this percentage but it is going to take all of you. Let’s show President Trump and all of America Kansas is TRUMP COUNTRY.’”

Yes, the Kansas primary has now become a Putin-esque exercise in mass fealty.

To avoid repeating this in 2028, Kansans could consider imposing conditions on their funding of presidential primaries.

First — like many other states do — allow unaffiliated voters to participate without joining a party, and second, the primary must be held on or before Super Tuesday, making the process actually meaningful. The parties are welcome to decline if they don’t like those conditions and revert back to running the primary elections themselves.

The state would be millions of dollars richer in the bargain.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Do Kansans want the presidential primary to matter? Try these suggestions