I raise this question in all seriousness. When I was a kid, candidates were basically chosen by party leaders. They mostly didn’t do such a bad job because they wanted to win elections. But it was considered undemocratic and so primaries became the basic way. This has led to the current impasse in which the most extreme tend to win primaries, no matter how badly they are placed for the general election. Can anyone imagine that the Republican party leaders in Georgia would have chosen Roy Moore as candidate? They would almost certainly have chosen Luther Strange.
I am not advocating returning to smoke-filled rooms. At first the transferable vote looks good, but it probably has drawbacks, including that the average voter might not understand it. The jungle primary can lead to two popular candidates knocking each other out and so on.
Perhaps this should go into GD, but I would like to see a discussion of the question. And particularly a discussion of the possible drawbacks of any system. I don’t think that any advocate of primaries imagined the growth of the Tea Party and the polarization that could result.
Despite all its flaws, the primary system is based on getting votes. And that’s the same criteria we use to determine who gets elected. So in that sense, I suppose it’s a good system; a candidate who can get votes in the primary is presumably a candidate who can get votes in the general election.
The main fix I’d like to see would be to break up the lock that Iowa and New Hampshire have on the system. There’s nothing special about these states in terms of how the country as a whole is governed. There’s no reason why they should have such a disproportionate role in selecting presidential candidates. I’d prefer to see a system where the order of primaries rotates between states.
Electability in primaries only translates to electability in the general election if the same people vote in both. They don’t. If nothing else, it’s only members of that party (or people who say they’re members of that party) who vote in primaries, so most of the folks who’d be turned off by a candidate being too extreme aren’t even voting at all. And then, because of turnout issues, primary voters tend to be even more extreme than their party as a whole. So you get, as Hari Seldon points out, extreme candidates.
I disagree. The primary system we have rewards candidates who can appeal to the stalwarts of their party first, only to shift to general appeal later. Candidates who may have general appeal first, before pandering to the party’s base, are at a very serious disadvantage.
In the last ten years or so, the Republican party has nominated some spectacularly bad candidates through this system, and let easy wins slip away. Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin failed to beat Claire McCaskill in a state where you have to go back to 1996 to find a Dem who won it. Christine “I am Not a Witch” O’Donnell probably didn’t have as easy a race, but man, was she weird. Sharron “My Idea of Health Care Reform is Bartering Chickens for Chemotherapy” Angle lost in Nevada in what should have be a lay-up race against punching bag Harry Reid.
There’s a million ideas on how to address this obvious problem with the primary system, but I am attracted to California’s open primary system of having the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, face off in the general election. I’m not sure if it is a good model for all states, but it sure is interesting.
I agree that a jungle primary would be an ideal solution to the situation we’re facing.
The issue with extremists in primaries is, to my mind, one of gerrymandering. By concentrating voters in specific districts it both concentrates the whack-jobs - on both sides, let’s admit - and dilutes moderates. It leads to less-than-ideal candidates. From the list above let’s not forget Indiana’s Richard Mourdock who defeated R incumbent Richard Lugar and lost in the general - hard to do for an R in Indiana - after taking the position that all life is sacred and abortion should still be illegal in cases of rape because God wanted it to happen.
I voted for that, even though I knew it would likely lead to the general having two Democratic candidates with whom I disagree with both. I figured it should serve to moderate the extremists. I don’t think it’s been long enough to see how it’s actually played out since I think incumbancy could overwhelm reasonableness when evaluating new folks vs. extremism.
But the Mourdock-Lugar race was a statewide primary election, as was the Moore-Strange election in Alabama. That’s not gerrymandering, unless you define the entire boundary of a state as gerrymandering. That’s just a question of which candidate can motivate more of their crazy-ass supporters to turn out and vote.
Jungle primaries don’t answer the question; they just push it back one step, probably to the smoke-filled room again. If your party has too many candidates in a jungle primary, they’re likely to compete against each other for votes, to the other party’s benefit. So it’s in the party’s best interests to only have one or two running. But which one or two?
Are you suggesting that party bosses can exert some influence on getting less competitive candidates off of the ballot? They can’t do that today with a closed primary system, as shown by the horrible candidates listed above. I’m not sure why the bosses would exert more influence in this type of system.
But I would agree, there’s always the risk of vote splitting leading to bad candidates winning. It’s a different situation, but look at Paul LePage in Maine.
Of course the party bosses have some influence. That’s a large part of why Clinton ended up as the Democratic nominee in 2016, instead of Sanders (and for the record, I don’t think there was anything unethical or improper about that, despite preferring Sanders).
If by “party bosses” you mean “virtually every Democratic leader of the past couple decades,” it’s quite a different implication than most people would think.
I mean, normal you would think of “party bosses” as a handful of people in a smoke filled room. Once you get up to 400 plus people in a smoke filled room, I think the term becomes meaningless.
ETA: and even still, the question was about the party removing non competitive candidates from the primary ballot. That didn’t happen in 2016.
I am. Especially for presidential elections. Especially since I live in an open primary state where people can cross over and get a candidate nominated and then not have to vote for that candidate in the general election. It skews the process and is evidence at how absurd the primary system is. The party leaders should pick a candidate that represents their platform and present them to the people, not the other way around.
I also advocate returning to U.S. Senators being chosen by state legislatures. The role of a Senator was not to be a direct representative of the people. That role goes to reps in the House.
The ridiculousness of our current elections is not just a recent thing. The seeds to it were planted over 100 years ago.
I understand what you are saying, and some do game the system, but in the case of voters like myself an open primary is a wonderful thing - especially in presidential elections. I vote for whomever I think is the best candidate, regardless of party. In the primary I will vote for my overall #1 candidate. If he/she doesn’t get enough votes to make it to the general election, I’ll cast my vote there for my next highest ranked individual - again, regardless of party. I have voted one party in the primary and another in the general election. It doesn’t happen every election, but it’s nice to not be locked in to a party.
I’m for keeping the Senators as direct votes of the people. If it was up to the state legislature, you’d always get members of the party controlling the state house. This discounts the possibility of a charismatic and popular figure emerging as Senator of a state normally controlled by the other party and it also will allow for more extremist Senators. You can’t gerrymander the Senate, so forcing them to win statewide races will filter out a lot of the kooks.
None of the electoral reforms make any sense without eliminating gerrymandering. What gerrymandering does is make a lot of uncompetitive districts and allows more extremists to get elected. Many Congressmen have no fear of the general election, what they fear is getting outflanked by extremists of their own party. So we either get extremists elected or else those who will toe the extremist line.
For president, I favor fewer primary days and maybe cluster together in maybe 6 groups say every third week. Have them all proportional representation so that nobody racks up an unbeatable margin early on. Let the party elders have some say but not too much. Republican party leaders had too little say over the nomination in 2016 while Democratic party leaders had too much. With Republicans, you’ve got an establishment wing and a batshit wing. In 2012 the batshit wing was splintered and an establishment guy got nominated, while in 2016 it was the opposite. The only way to fix this is to get the establishment guys to have some self-discipline and not jump into races they can’t win. I’m looking at you, Ben Carson. Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Lindsey Graham, Mike Huckabee, Bobby Jindal, George Pataki, Rick Santorum.
I say let anyone vote in any primary they want. I voted in the 2016 GOP primary just to extend a middle digit to Romney. My state doesn’t do voter registration by party, in my opinion no state should. You should show up and simply ask for a ballot and you would vote on only one side of the ballot in secret, while marking candidates on both sides would void your ballot.
For president, I’d like to see a convention before the convention pick the candidate. An actual nominating convention, maybe in January or February of the election year. Every state sends delegates chosen in a way that each state sees fit, but which includes a combination of elected office holders and common delegates who are chosen/elected in some manner. States get delegates allocated to them based on population, percentage of state-wide office-holders from that party, and state-wide popular vote from the last presidential election; this would make sure states like Vermont wouldn’t be overshadowed by states like Texas (for Dems) or California doesn’t overshadow South Dakota (for Pubs).
People who want to be the presidential nominee do their politicking at the convention with the mix of party big-wigs and regular delegates. First person to get 50% +1 of the votes is the party nominee. Running mate can be picked whenever.
This way, there’s some order and guidance provided by the party bigwigs, but it’s also going to take getting a lot of non-bigwig party members on board too. Speeches can be made, back-room chats can be had, a candidate’s pros and cons can be discussed, deals can be cut. It’s not televised so there’s no primetime grandstanding or obsession with optics. And top-tier candidates who may otherwise be turned off by a massive and messy and expensive primary campaign would put their hats in the ring, and win it through one-on-one politicking.
Make it less of a popularity contest, or a six-month reach-around to the extremists, and more of an actual appeal to party members who actually want the best possible person for the job. Each of the two major parties does this early in the year, then the summer conventions can serve as a coronation of the ticket plus the whole rah-rah bullshit with balloons and speeches.
Correct me if I am wrong but I distinctly recall that Clinton went into the convention with more elected delegates than Sanders. And, speaking as a socialist Jew, I feel that most of the US is not yet ready to vote for a socialist Jew for president.
The problem with the jungle primary is that two good candidates can knock each other out and let some a-hole sneak in. I think that that is more or less what happened in Maine.
Arrow’s theorem basically says there is not perfect system. But there are systems that minimize the paradox. I think the instant run-off does that best, although it is complicated.
Note that gerrymandering, although a serious problem, is an independent question.
From a strictly mathematical point of view, there are better systems than IRV, which doesn’t always follow the Condorcet condition.
That said, one essential feature of a voting system (not addressed by Arrow) is that the voters must trust it, and that in turn means that it’s essential that the voters understand it. Which means that Condorcet voting systems might work fine for the World Science Fiction Society, which is full of nerds, but they won’t work for electing any nation’s leaders. Which leaves either Approval Voting or IRV (either of which is far better than what we have now) as the real-world best.