Mid-Columbia | Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Washington
Wednesday, Feb. 20, 2008
Washington results prove the caucus/primary disconnect

Tuesday’s primary vote provided further proof of why Washington state voters are angry with the two major political parties.

The primaries brought out about 1.5 million voters, more than five times the number who participated in the caucuses. Results of the votes counted Tuesday varied considerably from the caucuses, although ultimately the two big winners were the same.

Republican John McCain, who squeaked through the caucuses so closely that runner-up Mike Huckabee cried for a recount, won handily in the primary voting, taking about 49 percent of the total to Huckabee’s 21 percent. That compares with just over 25 percent that McCain received in the caucuses.

A great example of the caucus/primary disconnect came with Republican (Libertarian?) Ron Paul, who took 21.5 percent of the caucus vote, but won only about 7 percent of Tuesday’s vote.

Half of the Republican delegates were awarded through the caucuses, with the other half to come from the primary results.

Democrats, who chose to award all of their delegates through the caucuses and to ignore the primary totally, picked Barack Obama in both the caucuses and the primary.

But while Obama took 68 percent of the caucus vote, he was just squeaking by Tuesday with 50 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 47 percent.

Caucuses have long been criticized for not producing outcomes that are representative of the electorate’s true opinion. It’s easy for well-mobilized supporters of a candidate to pack the caucuses, which have very small turnout compared with a primary vote.

Anyone who doubts that need only recall televangelist Pat Robertson’s victory in the 1988 Washington Republican caucuses — his only victory in an otherwise ignored candidacy. Color Washington state red for embarrassment in that election.

The state’s voters approved an initiative establishing the primary, but the political parties, especially the Democrats, have stubbornly stuck to an antiquated system to select candidates. It’s a system that clearly doesn’t accurately reflect what the voters want.

One can only wonder how long it will be before the parties get the message and listen to the people.

Rick Larson: 582-1522; rlarson@tricityherald.com

Rotten. Yep, quite literally in fact. A rotten banana republic.

In my opinion, the best way to select a strong nominee is to have two strong contenders battle it out to stay viable and in the race through Super Tuesday and beyond. Voters in states that have never mattered before to the nominating process have gotten to have a say this time around, and both candidates are getting stronger, improving their fundraising, meeting more voters, shoring up their weaknesses, and honing their message. In short, the best way to make sure everyone gets to participate in selecting our nominee is to present voters with an actual honest to goodness choice between two viable alternatives. It empowers our activists and strenghtens our party to help get more and more voters engaged and involved, and as a consequence, I think we all owe both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton a lot of gratitude for stepping forward and gearing up for this contest.

Regarding caucuses, they are exclusionary because they don’t allow absentee ballots and prehibit many types of folks from participating (shift workers, the homebound, the military overseas just to name a few). So I’d say that is undemocratic (democracy can’t be exclusionary). That given, a caucus can also be, as the authors say, intimidating and manipulative. For example, look at the stories that were coming out of the Nevada caucuses where workers reported that there labor bosses were threatening them if they didn’t vote a certain way.

Regarding crossover voting, Randy should visit my county elections sometime if he doesn’t think that crossover voters can cause mischief!

Over at MyDD there’s a really good discussion, with some pretty shocking statistics, on caucuses versus primaries: http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/2/9/22459/11370.

And a national primary means by default the candidates would spend their financial and human resources in the states that provide the most return on the dollar, i.e., delegates, meaning the smaller states get ignored. (Hmm, like the actual presidential election, come to thing of it.)

It is indeed a rotten process. But how do we fix it?

All of that said, the Democratic primary process has been absolutely riveting this year. If they were all like this, there probably wouldn’t be a lot of objection to the process, but we are witnessing something breathtakingly unique, in my opinion.

I don’t have a problem with open primaries at all. I do have a problem with lock-step my-party-believes-this-so-I’m-not-about-to-think-for-myself mentality. I have voted for Democrats at times and Republicans at other times in my life and I don’t expect that to change.

Unfortunately, the issue of uninformed voters making choices for, well, rather silly reasons is endemic to our society, in the primaries and in the general election. If there were a way to fix THAT, I’d be on board in a heartbeat.

Caucuses can be highly undemocratic.

I disagree. Caucuses are quite democratic. The lack of secret ballots opens voters up to confrontation with those who disagree, but it’s no more undemocratic than it is to expect candidates to say what they think. [Insert snarky rejoinder here.] The time commitment also keeps people away, but it doesn’t deny them a say in the process; it just hits their “I can’t be bothered” threshold.
The real problem with caucuses is that they don’t scale well. The coffee-klatsch format isn’t an effective way to assemble millions of people, and as I said, the time commitment does keep people away. Primaries are a more effective way of getting large masses of people involved. That’s not necessarily more “democratic”, but it is what it is.

The magnified importance of the early showdowns opens the door to abuse.

And yet this year, when the process became extremely front-loaded, the early races were a draw and the later primaries mean more than they have in decades, on the Democratic side at least. Go figure.

Open primaries and caucuses let voters from the other party cause all sorts of mischief.
Primaries tend to favor highly committed voters from the extremes, forcing candidates to pander to them.

These would actually cancel each other out, if crossover voting from the other side were the problem it is purported to be. I rather think that base voters on both sides stick to their own races in order to defend the parties’ purity from uncommitted voters in the center, who are the people the extremists really want to keep out.

The primary system took the power from the party bosses and gave it to the media, most notably the national media.

I can’t argue with that.