Regarding Polycarp’s concern for “residual state sovereignty,” I think the important thing here isn’t state sovereignty, but party sovereignty. The entity that’s choosing a nominee isn’t a succession of states, it’s a political party. And they, not the states, should be the ones deciding how their nomination process works.
The reason why it’s not like that, I assume, is that the states, not the parties, pay the cost of putting on a primary. The only tool the party has is to say, “if you schedule your primary for a date we don’t like, we don’t have to let it count - you’ll have a ‘beauty contest’ primary, and we’ll select your delegates in a caucus.”
That, however, is a pretty weak threat in most cases. Is the Democratic Party going to tell California or some other big state that if their primary is on Feb. 5, it’s not going to count? Not likely.
So we wind up with the crazy system we have because the states, not the parties, are driving the process. State sovereignty is the problem.
I’d never really thought about this before reading this thread, but as I did, until I got to this post, RTFirefly’s general idea was basically taking shape. Why not divide the states into general categories by population size (or by an algorithm covering both population and geography; it’d be a lot easier to canvas Rhode Island than Montana), and establish primary pools, where a couple of small states get to be the bellwether, then a few more small states go plus a medium or two, then more of the medium states, then the large ones at the end? Say, this year, Vermont and Alaska go first; then Wyoming, North Dakota, and Hawaii; later, Utah, Oregon, and Indiana get their say; and Illinois, New York, Texas, California, and Florida all go last, keeping the whole enchilada in play down to the wire.
Maybe sorta, but only because the states that currently come out ahead are so dogged in keeping it that way. If sovereignty confers power on individual states in contests against one another, it stands to reason that the ones who get shafted under the current system could have some say, if they really wanted it. Seems like a wash to me.
I think I like this idea - except the starting a year and a half before the election part. They’d start campaigning the week after the previous election then. About the only positive I can see is more material for The Daily Show.
There’s something to be said for having the primaries as late as possible. Ideally, I think I’d want my state primary a week or two before the convention, when there’s been a lot of chance to tear the front-runner down. Why commit delegates so early? Unless you mean them to be faithless when they find out about the past of their guy…