Can we please skip Arizona’s upcoming Presidential Preference Election?

Is the inevitability of a Trump vs. Biden redux an opportunity for Arizonans to save some dough?

Hmmm… I’ll list money-saving as a “maybe.” But I’m going with a Joe Biden-Donald Trump rematch as a 99% certainty. At least it is following Republican Nikki Haley’s loss to Trump in the New Hampshire primary.

(The reason I’m not going with 100%? These guys are so old I can’t say with enough certainty that they’ll live long enough to make it to Election Day.)

Haley’s “Pick-Me-Instead-of-Trump” argument hinges on the belief that if you want a Republican to replace Joe Biden in the White House, you need to pick somebody who can defeat Biden — and guess who was defeated by Biden in the last election? (Hint: his last name is Trump.) 

A sign that Haley may be that Republican is this: Haley’s support in New Hampshire drew directly from the political middle. 

But since 7 out of 10 Haley voters in New Hampshire’s open primary weren’t even registered Republicans, that’s a sign that she’s going to keep losing primaries. So it’s the time for her to fold her tent to save some cash (and save some face) before she loses in her home state of South Carolina.

If you need another solid sign that a Biden vs. Trump rematch is in the offing, consider this: Even though Biden’s name wasn’t printed on the New Hampshire ballot, he still won the Democratic primary, because more than half of voters wrote him in.

So, here, in Arizona, when the Presidential Preference Election rolls around in March, it will likely be a waste of time to vote.

Since it will likely be a waste of millions as well, I’m wondering: Can we just cancel it?

I don’t know exactly how much it’s going cost us Arizona taxpayers to hold that (worthless) election — but last fall, when the Arizona Republican Party considered running their own primary, they estimated it would cost them $10 million — just for one party.  

So maybe Donald Trump can finally prove he’s actually a fiscal conservative by being gracious and telling us that we don’t need to hold a presidential primary in Arizona. And he could make a lot of headlines if he does that while he’s in Arizona. 

But as certain as I am that we’ll have two guys on the ballot this fall with a combined age of 160, I’m just as certain that neither Biden or Trump would miss out on an opportunity to have millions of people vote for them — even if all of those votes don’t matter.

And that’s because every single vote does matter when it comes to the care and feeding of their egos. No matter how much it costs us in terms of taxpayer dollars — or our sanity.

Follow @JimSharpe