Opinion: Now, another choice for Super Tuesday

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Democracy can be a messy business. Even sticky. Take this stupid rush to move up the presidential primaries.

Everybody’s talking about Iowa and New Hampshire these days. But on Feb. 5, some 20 states will be voting, making it the busiest primary voting day in U.S. history. Both party races could be settled then. All on the very same day. It’s historic, no doubt.

But do you realize what havoc all that open, honest voting is likely to wreak on National Pancake Day, which also happens to fall on Feb. 5?

This is such serious business that IHOP, which used to be known as the International House of Pancakes, has dispatched letters to the governors of 15 states asking them to change the primary date because people might be so busy doing this time-consuming democratic voting stuff that they wouldn’t bother celebrating National Pancake Day by, say, eating pancakes at more than 1,300 IHOP restaurants. We’re talking some serious pancake-eating.

Pancakes are a traditional food eaten the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. And this would have been the second year that IHOP gave away free buttermilk pancakes all day in return for a donation to Children’s Miracle Network. Last year IHOP gave away 1.1 million pancakes and raised more than $625,000 for local children’s hospitals.

‘We realize and respect that the democratic process must be preserved,’ said IHOP’s pancake day director Patrick Lenow. ‘If the governors deny our request to move the primary dates, IHOP will be forced to activate Plan B.’

Plan B is not all that complicated. It means rescheduling to another day.

--Andrew Malcolm