Um, errr … I dunno, it contains Americans? 
Whew, only three left.
I suppose it’s very representative of Nebraska and the Dakotas; maybe Kansas. Other than that, not so much.
Ohio is usually the state chosen as representative. Perhaps you are confusing Iowa with Ohio?
Iowa and Ohio are virtually identical in vowel:consonant ratio. 
Barack Obama, a Black raised as a Muslim won the 2008 Iowa Democratic caucus over John Edwards, a White male.
Ted Cruz, a Latino, won the 2016 Iowa Republican caucus over Donald Trump, of European ancestry
Ted Cruz is also of European ancestry, but I get what you’re trying to say. However, if you look at Cruz’s ideology and policy preferences, you will probably find that they are most popular among non-Hispanic whites. If Cruz gets nominated, he will probably not do very well with Latino voters.
The parties are private entities, but the person they select does receive certain public perks. There are public funds available for their campaigns, and I think the requirement (like petition signatures) to get on the ballot are different.[sup]*[/sup]
Would that make a difference legally; could I object to the fact that they are receiving these accommodations when I didn’t have an equal voice in selecting them?
- I remember when Ross Perot was running as an independent, and he made a big deal when he got enough signatures to get on each state’s ballot. Some of the deadlines for those signatures were before the major parties had officially selected their nominees.
Define “equal voice.” Seriously.
That concept has plagued the Supreme Court on a number of occasions. There’s a case before it this term asking the question again.
Yet try to find it in the Constitution. The only reference to voting in the original Constitution is that Congress can set a uniform election day. There’s some stuff about electors, but not about voters. Amendments eliminated several barriers to voting and allowed citizens to vote for Senators. And that’s it. Voting was considered to basic that nobody even attempted to define it. Applying that right to parties, which also are nowhere in the Constitution, is another level of abstraction.
What, in any legal sense, gives you the right to demand an equal voice in a private group’s choice of candidate? Several zillion groups of various definitions receive money from the government. Do you have an equal voice - any voice - in how they function?
I have no idea. But no court has considered the question in the long history of parties, AFAIK. That’s a powerful answer in itself.
I’m not sure I can define it, but I know an unequal voice when I see it. The way the candidates spend on advertising in New Hampshire and (I assume) Iowa, the time they spend in the early primary states, and the policies they adopt make me think that the candidates want votes in those states a lot more than they want mine.
Ignore the money for a moment,[sup]*[/sup] what other special treatment do the major party nominees get? Are they automatically on the state ballots without having to gather the signatures that an independent candidate would? Anything else? Seems to me that should give me some interest in how the nominees are selected.
Of course, no politician has a reason to question or challenge the system. No one wants to kick out the ladder that got them where they are, especially while they’re standing on it.
- A statement you will never hear again in reference to politics.
The Constitution explicitly mandates the electoral college system, which requires voting by state, and gives relatively greater weight to voters in less populated states than to those in more populated states. I think these explicit provisions are going to outweigh argument that the generalised “equal protection” clause means that presidential elections have to afford an equal voice to all citizens.
As for advertising, it’s generally the case in all democratic elections that candidates target voters based on some combination of how likely it is they think they can attract particular voters - The Donald is not targetting Latino or Muslim voters - and how likely it is that attracting those voters will result in winning the election - nobody is targetting the Icelandic-American vote. So the fact that the demographic which includes you is not flavour of the month with any of the candidates isn’t, in itself, evidence that the election is undemocratically or unconstitutionally skewed.
The US suffers from (or at any rate is marked by) being an early adopter of popular democracy. American electoral mechanisms, like British plumbing, are clunky and arguably sub-standard by reference to the mechanisms used in more recently-established democracies. In many respects the system has features which tend to minimise the voice of the individual voter, while maximising the voice of collective entities, whether they be parties or states. You might think that this is a good thing or a bad thing or a bit of both, but it’s so well entrenched that it’s going to be hard to argue that it’s unconstitutional.
Prove he was raised as a Muslim.
His step father in Indonesia was a sunni muslim and his father converted from Catholic to Islam. Obama went to a Catholic school in Jakarta, but its likely he attended a mosque with his step father some of the time. None of that matters since he’s a Christian now, and personally I think its a good thing that a political leader is exposed to other cultures and religions at a young age.
Nothing there even implies that he was raised Muslim.
Plus, I think the statement that Obama’s father “converted from Catholic to Islam” is wrong. Obama’s grandfather converted to Islam, but did not pass that faith on to his children (who included Obama’s father). Obama’s father was baptised as an Anglican in childhood, but in adult life professed atheism.
Oh, I guess I’m not actually trying to argue that it’s unconstitutional, just that it’s unfair.
Well, then, the answer to the question you asked in post #86 . . .
. . . is “no”.
Well, part of the discussion in this thread is that people don’t have a right to challenge the workings of political parties because they’re private organizations. But the decisions of those private organizations have public consequences. It seems to me that that increases the unfairness of the process. Now it seems like the answer is that there’s still no legal remedy because there’s no guarantee that the process will be fair.
Except that this thread discusses not “the workings of political parties” in general terms, but specifically the primary elections in which the parties choose their candidates. And the conduct of primary elections is regulated by state law, and can certainly be challenged in the courts. But the question is whether there is a sound legal basis for challenging them. And “I think it’s not fair!” is not much of a basis.
Presumably, if an otherwise eligible citizen were excluded from voting in a primary because (say) they were black, they could challenge that, and the challenge would succeed. If they were excluded by the operation of some other rule or rules, and they felt those rules impacted disproportionately on black citizens, they could again bring a challenge, and the challenge would (I’m guessing) be judged using the same criteria that would be used if the election were a general election rather than a primary.
But the OP suggests challenging the Iowa caucuses on the grounds that participating involves attending for a significant period of time; you won’t be in and out in ten minutes. And this impacts adversely on people with other commitments, and favours those with fewer demands on their time.
I really couldn’t see that challenge succeeding. The point about the Iowa causes is that they are a deliberative process; people discuss the candidates and (hopefully) listen to one another. While it would be possible to select candidates through a process which doesn’t make space for discussion and deliberation, and more people could participate in that process, the point of the process is not to confer and advantage on the individuals who participate, but to benefit the community by having the parties field candidates who have been selected after some deliberation and discussion.
In fact, Perot, being a cranky contrarian billionaire (do they run?) spent a lot of money on lawyers from what I heard - to straighten out some of these inequities of the election system. he took a number of states to court over the impediments to registering as a third-party candidate and basically ensured that people like Nader could get on the ballot almost everywhere relatively easily.
Same system in Canada - one tactic is for each potential candidate to try to sell as many memberships as possible to potential supporters so they could show up and vote in the party meeting. This sometimes results in some very heated meetings with almost a thousand people showing up, contested memberships, etc. if the riding is up for grabs and expected to be an easy win. It’s most noticeable on the news when there’s an interesting ethnic battle, and for example hundreds of Sikhs or Italians show up for their candidate. Ethnic organizations are always a good way to get hundreds of new party recruits.
(Our new defence minister is a Sikh and a real bad-ass former Canadian Forces commando who fought in Afghanistan.)
Most nominations are pretty tame affairs, mostly the hundred or so party faithful who care enough to show up and vote. Usually, the incumbent is a shoe-in. The central party has to sign off on the candidate, so extreme or embarrassing candidates might be rejected. There is no set time for the nomination, it’s not completely unheard of for a nomination to happen a year or so before, if there’s one eager candidate who thinks they can spend a year going door to door to get known and try to unseat the incumbent. Elections can happen anytime, although recently there’s been laws to make them happen on a regular schedule; usually it’s known when an election is imminent and the candidates will be in place in time.
this is one of the distinct differences vs the USA - the VAST majority of Canadians do not profess any party affiliation; that level of political “penetration” is unknown in Canada. With 2.7 parties, plus a regional one in Quebec, it’s amazing how volatile the vote can be at times. the conservatives in 1993 went from a majority of almost 200 seats in parliament… to 2 seats. The losing prime minister said on election night “my Toyota has more seats…”
I’m not following that at all.
In Canada, the leadership races for the parties always get major media coverage.
If it’s a convention, the speeches and then the balloting are covered live.
If it’s a cross-Canada ballot, that process is followed closely by the media.
In what way are you claiming it’s opaque?
Because I didn’t engage brain, or at least google, before putting mouth in gear. Canada has primaries, apparently adopted in the 1990s. And I wasn’t aware of how many other parliamentary systems are adopting or discussing adopting them.