So the people of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan (sort of), South Carolina and Florida (sort of) have had a chance to vote and they have eliminated Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, Edwards, Brownback, Hunter, Tancredo, Thompson, Giuliani and just about Huckabee, Paul and Romney.
Wasn’t that kind of them? Six states, most them arguably untypical of the larger country, and here we are left with Clinton, Obama and McCain.
Do you feel like you didn’t have much of a say?
What is your solution?
Let New Mexicans decide for everyone. 🙂
A national primary (for each party) in early April, six months before election day, might be one idea. Or five or six regional primaries two weeks apart in March and April — Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, Far West or some such distribution relatively even on population.
That’s just off the top of my head. I gotta catch a plane to go visit some of the young ‘uns.
Did these states really decide for us, or was it the media?
What’s wrong with eliminating the whackos on the right (Brownback, Hunter, Tancredo), the whackos on the left (Kucinich, Edwards), the mainstream candidates who neither distinguished themselves enough nor fired up the base (Biden, Dodd, Richardson), and candidates who don’t seem to know how to run a 21st century campaign (Giuliani and Thompson)?
We still have some candidates who don’t know how to take no for an answer (Huckabee and Paul) and one who has, so far, been beaten fair and square (Romney).
Of the three that are left, one is the close relative of a former president (viz. Adams, Bush, Harrison), one a war hero (viz. Washington, Eisenhower, Jackson), and one is an outside-the-beltway preacher (Clinton, Reagan, Lincoln).
And your problem is…?
I’m more and more convinced that democracy doesn’t scale, or at least that nobody is seriously interested in making it scale.
What we have right now is plutocracy verging awfully close to fascism, so I think that bears me out.
I’m also more and more convinced that if the country hits another Depression, we’ll see the union dissolve into Jesusland and a few other entities.
I hope I’m wrong.
Because Hugh, as is, voters everywhere else are denied the important sense of participation in the democratic process.
The argument if favor of the current system is the early states are small enough that real people interact *more than once* with *more than one candidate*. That’s not practical in California, Texas or even New Mexico.
I’m interested in clusters of primaries, pairing big and smaller (geographically) states. I’d like to see some tie-in to voter turnout. That is, in 2012, the first states to vote will be those that have the highest percentage of voter turn out this year. Reward states with engaged voters.
peace,
mjh
The system isn’t the best. It is quite arbitrary in the way it chooses those who will be winnowed down to become finalists.
But, it isn’t completely flawed either. Critically, having multiple rounds in the selection process, with many candidates eliminated in the early rounds, is important to making the system work well. Many candidates can be culled with minimal examination, but requiring voters to evaluate a large field of candidates reduces the amount of attention that voters and the press can give to any one candidate.
A multiple round system allows the media and political elites, and through them, the public, to get a closer look at the strongest candidates before making a final decision.
Essentially, we have four phases in the current process:
1. The 99.999999% of eligible voters who choose not to run are elminated from the race, typically leaving two or three dozen candidates.
Of these several dozen candidates, typically only about a dozen or so have a chance in hell of winning because they meet the informal requirements of previous experience as a Governor, U.S. Senator, Vice President, federal cabinet member, major city mayor, or prominent U.S. House member (third party candidates are subject to less formal, but equally stringent requirements, in the case of Ross Perot, for example, serving as the CEO of a large publicly held corporation) and have raised a meaningful amount of funds from donors. The rest are vanity candidates or highly functioning lunatics from the start.
2. In the year before the first votes are cast, and the first couple months of a campaign with the half dozen or so early primaries and caucuses, each major party winnows in candidates down to two or three serious candidates (or often just one, if there is an incumbent), and up to one or two viable third party candidates may emerge.
The process of weeding out the vanity candidates and lunatics is almost ministerial. Any state chosen for early primaries or caucuses would have achieved the same results. So, in practice, each major party weeds the field from half a dozen or so viable candidates down to two or three in the early primaries and caucuses. It is the part of the weeding process where early states have power, although part of their power also flows from the widely held belief that their judgments would be affirmed elsewhere — New Hampshire is presumed to be a bellwhether for the Northeast, Iowa for the Midwest, South Carolina for the South, and Nevada for the West.
The use of small states in each region is designed to reduce the cost of campaigning for candidates who don’t know how far their campaigns will go, although the effect has been less strong as a way to boost insurgent less well known candidates than one might hope. The focus on cost is driven by the fact that it is believed to be harder to educated voters in a race with many candidates (often with only limited free media assistance) than it is in a race with few candidates all of whom have been vetted in prior contests.
The early weeding process is also designed to help reduce the amount of a limited pool of intraparty donor money is spent on candidates whom voters turn out not to like, so that the expensive matter of informing the general public can focus resources on the strongest candidates.
3. The remaining primaries and caucuses, and if necessary, a national convention, each of the two major parties chooses a single nominee.
4. Voters in the general election choose a winner from the two major party candidates and any viable third party candidate (almost always ignoring non-viable third party candidates who appear on some ballots), in a way that roughly approximates a national popular vote much of the time.
No one has any problem with step one, although it could perhaps be slightly more rigorous. Step three could easily be handled with a national primary. Step four with its cumbersome electoral college has many detractors, but is very difficult to fix under the constitution.
There is a great deal of unhappiness with how step two plays out, but there needs to be a step like it to cull down the list before the entire national primary voter poll weighs in (or alternately two rounds of a national primary), and if the cost argument has any validity, the second step should be cheaper to participate in than the third step.
I’d also note that while NewMexiKen is correct that “voters everywhere else are denied the important sense of participation in the democratic process.” That not everyone wants it.
Half of eligible voters don’t even bother to vote in Presidential elections. Only about half to two-thirds of eligible voters will bother to vote in primary elections, and fewer than one in five eligible voters will bother to attend a caucus even in a Presidential year fairly early in the game.
Studies by political scientists have shown that most unaffiliated voters who do vote are less informed, are less interested in politics generally, and see voting as a chore rather than something they are eager to have a say in particpating in. Partisanship and activism and interest are strongly linked.
I’d personally favor a national caucus, followed by a national primary, followed by the general election.
I would also like in any election:
“instant run-off” (rank your preferences)
“None of the above” (“I voted, but not for the limited choices I was given.”)
peace,
mjh
Is it any wonder the sates are all trying to move up their primaries?
If it were up to me I’d eliminate political parties and let all candidates for all offices run on their own merits rather than on their party affiliations.
And John is mostly right about the media choosing the candidates.