Primary timing
I’ve been unhappy with the primary system for a long time.
I don’t like the fact that so many states allow voters to cross over, rather than limiting voting to those registered in each party. I don’t like the long, long, long drawn out season. And I don’t like the fact that the results are usually locked in long before the convention, and therefore they can’t be responsive to breaking developments.
The unusual volatility of this year’s primary season—with its ever-changing frontrunners du jour—has exacerbated the problems that have always existed. Each state primary is a snapshot taken at a moment in time, and especially this year, voters might be deciding something entirely different only a few weeks earlier or later.
And these objections of mine have nothing to do with whether my favored candidate wins or loses. These rapid ups and downs are the problem; they signify the dissatisfaction of the voters with the entire field (which I share) and an almost desperate casting around for a better alternative. Although I hate to be so gloomy, I must say that this doesn’t bode well for November.
And I don’t think a brokered convention would necessarily help. First of all, I don’t think it will happen, although I believe it to be more likely now than I did a month ago. Those of you who hate the “establishment” Republicans shouldn’t be all that happy if they take over, should you?
Although I can certainly imagine better candidates being drafted by that “establishment” after a bunch of trading and dickering, whoever would be selected would be a person who didn’t have the drive and the guts to declare in the first place, and would only have a few short weeks to sell him/herself to the American public and to deflect the storm of excrement that would come his/her way. The only good part is that choosing someone that close to the election in time would at least allow the selection process to be responsive to recent events.
Sigh.
The current crop of candidates are not all that bad (not great). If we expect a great leader to emerge when the country is not ready or convinced of danger, it will not happen. The best we can do is have someone who will hold the line and rise to the danger if it breaks during his term. The leadership will come from outside of the national government. But the President must understand this in his core.
Yeah, maybe it’s just Friday. But, my pessimism is increasing for November. The Republicans are all shooting each other, and that includes Palin taking shots. Does not bode well.
And, I think O’Reilly may have a valid point that he has been making all week: with 50% of the country supporting Obama, maybe that’s what everybody really wants. Half of the population are perfectly fine with a socialistic cradle-to-grave system no matter what the evidence emerging from Europe may tell them. As I saw on another blog; it looks like the end times for the US.
Phisicsguy:
50% of the American public would also like a car that runs on perpetual motion. That’s against the laws of physics, though, so you know it won’t happen even if they do want it. Same with a socialist USA. It’s an impossibility because there’s just not enough value being generated by the makers to take care of the takers. Physical impossibility. They can vote for it; won’t happen.
I agree with all of Neo’s points about the primary season: too long, non-party voters, issue of the week, and flavor of the month. The flaws are especially apparent when only one party is going through this and the other party has a candidate who seems to rise above all this mess. I do think that if we could settle on someone, we could get behind him and focus on issues that differentiate us from the incompetent in chief. And maybe the MSM would lose some advertisers if they didn’t have so much raw meat to offer viewers.
Well, let’s try to have a bit of objectivity, instead of the emotional “I’m sick of this all,” “issue du jour”, etc.
Crossover voting is illogical. Thus bad. Dilutes and diminishes the purpose of the primaries and two-party system.
A long primary season is not bad. It is good. It allows those with smaller initial campaign coffers and less initial visibility to become visible, known, and eventually better funded. That is therefore (small D) democratic.
Super Tuesday is bad, because it concentrates lots of primaries on the same day, and that favors the monied visibles.
Winner-take-all primaries are bad. McCain won all delegates in some states by winning narrow pluralities, not majorities. I’ve not researched this, but this seems more of a GOP pattern; thus the long Hussein v. Hillary struggle….Hussein got 52% of the vote in State X, thus 52% of the delegates, etc., etc. Winning proportional delgates seems more reasonable to me.
Caucuses are bad. They may in fact be open… I don’t know if that’s true in Iowa or elsewhere. Caucuses that yield no delegate assignments (e.g. NV) are worse; they are basically pointless.
I listened to Judge Napolitino’s speech where he stated that during the revolution 1/3 of the country was for, 1/3 against, and 1/3 didn’t care, which are about the same stats as today if you substitute Obama for Great Britain.
Okay. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
And then there’s the 10 to 1 rule: One “good” person has an equal nfluence and result than ten “bad” ones.
Don Carlos,
The problem with the drawn out season is that candidates do, in fact, rise and fall on issues of the day. I don’t know how to remedy this, but it doesn’t seem to me that voters have a chance (or perhaps the desire) to evaluate candidates on a wide range of issues and then determine who best matches their own priorities. I suspect that lots of people get tired of all the noise and just stop listening. I don’t think serious issues make it through to most people when they are trying to catch up with last-minute Christmas shopping.
SOLUTION:
A SERIES OF STATE PRIMARIES LIMITED TO PARTY MEMBERS, ON THE SAME DATE EACH MONTH, FIVE STATES, EACH IN A DIFFERENT REGION, HAVE A PRIMARY – NOT A CAUCUS.
SOUTH, NEW ENGLAND, MIDDLE ATLANTIC, WEST, MID-WEST.
FOR EXAMPLE:
JANUARY 7 – IOWA; NH, SC, NV, PA
FEBRUARY 7 – MO, MANE, FL, CO, NJ
MARCH 7 – MICH, PA, GA, CT, NM
APRIL 7 – WI, OH, NY, UT, TX
MAY 7 – THE REST ALL AT ONCE.
reliapundit:
Pennsylvania gets two primaries? Cool!
Better solution….
[hope this doesn’t come out too long… ]
let the people vote for who they want and not who the party presents to them…
the socialists long ago noticed that in the US the voting system was fluid… (and oaths were not required to a party or after a change)… so why should the socialists be happy with picayune votes? why not over time, take the places of regular party people, and replace them? then each replacement helps each other.. the length of time they can keep being re-elected and hold post can be extreme. why couldn’t a communist with no history get on ticket as a democrat or republican?
over time.. they may be able to put anyone they want in office, for as long as they need and can privately collude with each other on the whole game… and no way for us plebs to know. eh?
but a socialist in the white house? yeah right
sure.. never happen… and no matter how bad he does.. he swings the second election too? no way… right?
here is an interesting list i found…
Expat:
The fickleness of the public you and Neo abhor is of course one of the dangers of a pure democracy, as the Founders of our country (and others before them!)recognized. Thus we are a Republic; thus Senate terms are 6 years, and House terms, two.
Public fickleness is a given, in pretty much any non-totalitarian polity. I see no point in railing against its unavoidable existence.
As to Artfldgr’s anti-organized party theme, how to organize any movement without organization? The associated corruptive temptations are an unavoidable concomitant of the nature of man. Secularization amplifies those corruptions.
And most people are not serious about anything beyond arm’s reach; most are chuckleheads.
Yes, Don Carlos, the root of the problem is democracy itself.
It is not a stable form of government. The Founders were well aware of that, and went to great lengths to avoid it. Yet some 230 years later, our republic has indeed degenerated into a nearly pure democracy.
Voting must be an earned privilege, not a right. A society that gives the people riding in the cart equal say with the people pulling the cart is doomed, and there is simply no way around it.
Getting back to the topic of the primary system, it is severely broken. The same handful of states go first every time, and the primary schedule is heavily front-loaded with open primary states, thus giving Democrat and independent voters a disproportionate voice in determining the Republican nominee. This was plainly obvious after 2008, and I don’t see how any attempt was made to fix it.
What was even worse this time was the interminable series of debates that were held before even the first primary. Nearly all the debates were moderated by MSM liberals. Conservative talk radio hosts are very popular. Why were there no debates moderated by Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, Dennis Prager, Bill Bennett, or Michael Medved? Any of them are certainly up to the task. The only conclusion I can reach is that the Republican leadership wanted it that way.
In my opinion, the debates undermined the primary system itself, and allowed the media and pollsters to choose the front-runner, as well as eliminate several candidates, before any voters got a chance to have their say. Again, the Republican Party doesn’t seem to have a problem with that.
I think we have a fundamental flaw in our system that makes everything work badly…namely this “one man one vote” business.
Look around all over the world at the democracies…all have problems with people who get government money being able to vote just like the producers do. Is it any wonder that there’s a long term trend towards socialism?
I’d like a multiple vote system where a person can have more than one vote based on education, service in the military (or other service to the country), owning a business, etc.
Yeah, Texexec…dream on.
The objective reality is that we got better candidates before the primary system took over. We should get rid of them. Although, they do have entertainment value.
However, if we must have primaries then it is clear that I should have the right to vote in ALL primaries that my state runs. One of the clown-candidates will win the election and run roughshod over me and mine, and I have the right to help decide who, in every party.
If I can vote in only one primary, then the state should not run them. The parties should run the primaries completely independently of the state and pay for them and staff them themselves.
bob sykes:
I agree that the legendary smoke-filled rooms produced a higher class of candidate. The party insiders knew the potential candidates as people, and were generally able to weed out extremists, crackpots, and those with serious skeletons in their closets.
I assume the primary system evolved in order to make the selection process more democratic. See my earlier comment about democracy. The results have been sadly predictable.
I’m totally opposed to open primaries, but you’re right in that they should be run by the parties, not the state.
An alternative voting system that I like very much is called href=”http://www.universalworkshop.com/ARVOfull.htm”>approval voting.
In this system, a voter may cast a vote for any candidate on the ballot. If you vote for every candidate, your votes cancel each other out and it’s exactly the same as not voting.
With approval voting, you can vote for both the candidate you really want as well as the one you think has the best chance of winning. It completely eliminates the “throwing your vote away” objection to voting for a third party candidate.
That link again:
The Arithmetic of Voting
Overall, these primaries could not be going better for Obama if his operatives were running them.
vanderleun: His operatives *are* running them.
They’re all members of the Bi-Factional Bank Party.