Let's fix the nominating process! Woot!

Great Debates
1

As detailed in threads ad nauseum and in a million places around the media this year the nominating process for the major party presidential candidates has finally gone completely loopy. We’re at the point where, in an attempt to gain influence, state are moving their primaries/caucuses up to the point where we’re threatened with having them occur the year before the general election.

This year Iowa and New Hampshire will occur within the first eight days of the year, leaving them more than seven months prior to the democratic convention in Denver and a full eight months before the Republican convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. Oofah, how can the voters know how things will fall out.

I’d like to think that most of us could agree that the emphasis on small, non-representative states to do the initial sorting out is counter-intuitive. In addition, the jealousy inherent in Iowa and New Hampshire’s status as first in the nation isn’t helping the situation either. Both derive significant political and economic benefit from their positions but I’m not sure that’s worth the other 48 states being left out in the cold.

So how do we fix it?

Do we leave it as is?

Do we alter it while leaving the fundamentals in place?

Do we change it radically?

Or do we scrap it completely and go back to smoke-filled rooms and brokered conventions?

2

I actually don’t agree. Imagine if California and Texas were the first two. Don’t win either of those, and you may as well go home after the first week. Letting the small guys go first means a candidate has a fighting chance to turn the candidacy around and win.

This is my vote. Let the elected representatives from each party determine who is actually smart enough and qualified enough to select the best candidate for president.

3

JC, I’m confused about one thing:

What does Woot! have to do with fixing the nominating process?

I mean, it’s a great site, I check it every morning, bought my Roomba and a bunch of other stuff through them, but still… :wink:

4

One, I’d select the order of primaries by lottery each time. Iowa and New Hampshire can suck it.

Two, I’d make all of the primaries occur in a 5 week period ending 4 months prior to the general election. Any official activity from erstwhile candidates or reporting of said activities more than 1 month prior to the beginning of primaries would be expressly prohibited (and punishable by death, if I had my druthers).

Three, Election Day will no longer be Tuesdays, when only old coots and the strident fringe vote. It will be Saturday henceforth, with generous provisions made for online/by mail voting.

So basically, the entire presidential nomination/election process would take 6 months, no more.

All of this would be made possible by federally funding presidential elections completely outlawing campaign contributions.

5

If we’re talking about rebooting the process, then maybe we should re-think the requirement of fixed presidential terms. Parliamentary systems don’t have prolonged campaigns for prime minister.

6

I agree with this. The general public doesn’t always know what’s best. Ever since the primary system became the “norm” nationwide about 30 or so years ago, we’ve just gotten worse and worse nominees, in my opinion.

7

I can see that. But remember that the prevailing thought at the time (circa 1970) was that convention nomination failed to represent the will of the people and therefore state-by-state primaries and such would be more representative.

8

Well, then, how about this:

Not just anyone can toss their hat into the presidential campaign ring (and affiliate themselves with a particular party. Anyone could still run as a third party or independent). The party would decide on two, or maybe three, candidates for the people to vote on in the primary. That would narrow the focus. If the Dem party only gave us the option between Obama and Clinton, or Clinton and Edwards, or whatever, then this would be a whole 'nother ball game.

I think it would make things a lot tighter, plus you might get some quality people interested in actually running if they didn’t have to deal with the bullshit primary process as it is right now.

Were Kerry, GWBush, Dukakis, Mondale et al really the best people that the parties could put up as nominees? Of course not, those were the ones willing (or stupid enough) to go through the flawed and irrational primary process.

9

I don’t know what you want out of the primary process but I cannot think of a better way to keep the two party system entrenched than by giving them complete control over how campaign contributions are allocated.

10

There are some ridiculous elements in the nominating process, especially the increasing hurry to get the whole thing over with in a few week. But I don’t see how making the whole thing less transparent improves them. Do the political bosses in the smoke-filled back room really have a better track record than primary voters do?

11

I think what we have works very well. The people of Iowa take their role very seriously and are very good at it. If we had a national primary, the winner would be the one with the most money and the best ad agency. Now, they have to prove themselves by answering hard questions one on one with a well informed test population. Once they winnow the field down, New Hampshire is another test of retail politics. Only by surviving those tests do the candidates get into the mass marketing. I say it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.

12

I have two suggestions.

  1. Primary elections should be by simple approval vote. You can vote for as many or as few candidates as you like. Give delegates in proportion to the number of votes received. The nominee will have received the most widespread approval in their party.

  2. Order of primaries/caucuses is determined by voter turnout in the previous presidential election. Divide the states into five groups. The ten states with highest voter turnout (measured as the number of voters divided by the number of people eligible to vote) have primaries/caucuses in January. The next ten go in February. And so on, so that the ten states with the lowest turnout go in May. States could hold the primary on any day in their assigned month.

This proposal would prevent a few states from getting a stranglehold on primary primacy. Let the states with the most interest go first. Small states would still be favored, since they’d need to turnout fewer people to get a higher rating.

13

That might be true, but I also can’t think a better way of keeping wealthy interests entrenched than to giving them complete control over who even gets to run in the first place.

I’m in favor of taking money OUT of the equation. IMHO, money is NOT free speech; it’s a big stick.

14

While I understand that the Dems had a problem, what with RFK having just been assassinated, the nomination of Humphrey who hadn’t even participated in the primaries was just a disaster.

I figure that in 2004, the guys in the smoke-filled room would have chosen Lieberman or Gephardt. After all the criticism Kerry’s taken, it’s easy to forget the Dems had far worse choices than Kerry, and it took the primaries to demonstrate just how bad they were.

Whatever we do, going back to the smoke-filled room isn’t the answer. Mend the primaries, don’t end them.

15

I’m not sure about the specific details of this plan (i.e. 10 states/month), but I think the general concept is brilliant. Talk about spurring some voter turnout plans! Great idea.

16

To continue, I’d like to see three things in a primary system:

  1. Small states first (and large states last), but a rotation of small states first that better represent the electorate. (No privileged position for Iowa and NH.)

  2. More time between early primaries/caucuses. The process should contain pauses to absorb what we’ve learned so far about the candidates.

  3. Let’s start the primaries early enough, or start the debates late enough, so we can have a bunch of debates after the first couple of primaries and caucuses has weeded the field down somewhat, but before the issue has been settled. The idea is to give the debate organizers reasonable grounds to eliminate vanity candidates who keep on running despite having gotten essentially no votes.

Further discussion:

  1. RI would be a good early primary. Small, urban, a great alternative to the whitebread states. Delaware wouldn’t be bad either - while it’s got a fair amount of rural territory, ‘south of the canal’ is definitely outvoted by Wilmington. Connecticut. Even Massachusetts wouldn’t be too bad as a fourth or fifth primary in the sequence.

In other regions: Southeast - SC could rotate with Arkansas and WV. Mountain West - the Dems could rotate NV, NM, and Montana. Pacific Coast - Oregon’s the only more or less low-pop state out there. Midwest - oh, what the hell, Iowa.

2 and 3) Way back in February or March, I posted on MyDD to suggest that they move Iowa up to June 2007, and hold NH in September, with NV and SC in October and November, with everyone else following after Jan. 1. The suggestion was only frivolous in the sense that I knew it would never happen, even if I were the Dems’ biggest power-broker, rather than some guy with zero influence.

We’ve had a long year of campaigning and debating, with no real benchmarks - and starting a month from today, and ending two months from Wednesday, the whole thing will be decided in a big blur. That’s simply insane.

I don’t expect the campaign season to get shorter. It never does, and I don’t see any credible mechanism to compel it, without rewriting the Constitution. So we can assume that the serious candidates for the 2012 nominations will be actively campaigning by the time the forsythia blooms in 2011.

We might as well adapt the primary calendar to that reality: if it’s possible to do so, have the first primary or caucus in midyear, the year before the election. Then have 3-5 more small-state primaries or caucuses during the remainder of the year, spaced out with plenty of time between them.

Then after the first of the year, let every remaining state do what it wants: by then, there will have been enough primaries and debates that everyone will have had enough of a chance to think about it, and the vanity candidates will have either called it quits, or been excluded from the last few months’ worth of debates on the grounds that nobody’s voted for them. But the candidates with credible backing should still be around.

Have a Super Tuesday in January that includes every state that hasn’t already chosen its delegates, if that’s what suits everyone. That’ll keep California from having a case of the “we didn’t get to have a primary until it was all over” case of the vapors.

17

Okay, so some principles first.

The primaries are much more important than the general election. When you end up with two vastly different candidates at the end, just about everyone is voting squarely along party lines and the race ends up being decided by a handful of moderates in an otherwise unremarkable part of America. Big states such as California and Texas generally get totally overlooked, since they’re almost certainly voting for the Democratic and Republican candidate, respectively, regardless of who those candidates are.

That being said, I favor a longer primary process and a shorter period between conventions and the Presidential election. I wouldn’t mind multi-candidate debates (e.g. top two Democratic candidates vs. top two Republicans).

The primaries should be as close to being on the same day as possible. Yes, this creates a problem for the candidates deciding where to campaign. No, I don’t consider that a significant problem. I’d say a two week period leading up to the national conventions is fine.

18

Correct me if I’m wrong, but don’t we theoretically vote for ELECTORS? Maybe we should ignore the candidates and have people from each state running for the position of elector. So my state (California) is divided into 55 districts and I campaign as a Progressive Republican. If I’m one of the two leading vote-getters in the primary (and don’t get over 50% of the vote) then my opponant and I runoff in the general election.

I win so I know that the people in my district want social moderatism with fiscal conservatism. Abortion and the Iraqi War are big issues too, but since they voted for me, I assume that their views match my own pretty closely. Now I go to Sacramento and cast a vote for someone who:

  1. I believe will make a good President
  2. Has a good chance of getting 269 other electoral votes

Clearly the Progressives nationwide will have some way of discussing potential choices and will put forth a moderate president/vice-president (let’s say Guliani/McCain)combination as a block of . . . oh, 103 votes.

What do ya think?

19

I was actually coming in here to post a similar idea. But not as well thought out as yours. Bravo.

20

A spur-of-the-moment thought here but what about debate delegates? Have a crowd of a thousand or so voters at the debates. Let the candidates debate each other and maybe answer questions from the crowd. Then at the end have the listeners vote and the candidate who gets the highest vote total gets a delegate. Candidates will stop trying to avoid debates and those who do well could reach the convention with a couple dozen extra delegates.