The Washington Post had article in the Sunday edition with the above title. In it, the authors give a bit of history on how we came to choose presidential nominees by the system of caucuses and primaries:
The old ways [of allowing party bosses to chose the nominees] were unfair and autocratic, of course. But the new ones have grave problems, too.
The problems cited:
- Caucuses can be highly undemocratic.
- The magnified importance of the early showdowns opens the door to abuse.
- 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.
- The primary system took the power from the party bosses and gave it to the media, most notably the national media.
I have to agree with the authors. It’s time for another reformation of the process. It seems to me that we have a lot more people engaged in the process but not necessarily a more informed group of voters. I remain amazed at the number of folks that I have talked to that are choosing to support a candidate based not on where the candidate stands on the issues, but for reasons totally unrelated.
Yeah – it’s a rotten way to pick a president.
(h/t to sleepless in virginia for pointing out this article)
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
I made a similar recommendation to Dr. Sabato, which makes me feel like I’m in good company. A national primary actually would make it harder on the sort of candidate who wouldn’t be picked by the hated “establishment.” It takes a boatload of money to run a national primary, and without any early primary states to filter out who is precisely thought by a regular voter somewhere who is viable and who is not, the only one with any say about who is a viable candidate and who isn’t is CNN. That solves your problems how?
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.
There is no way that a national primary could be run. It would be worse that what we have now. But a series of regional primaries makes sense to me. I don’t like the fact that the media dominated the early contests this year, making it a horse race early on, without giving real consideration to the other candidates. Why does it have to be two? Why couldn’t it be more?
I recommend we just have the state legislatures appoint the electors.
It could be argued that the media dominated the early contests on the Democratic side, but the GOP voters definitely saw past early media coronations of “frontrunner” status. Early media favorite Rudy Giuliani didn’t get anywhere with actual voters, John McCain’s campaign only took off after the media began ignoring him, and nobody (well, except for The Virginian Federalist) took much note of Mike Huckabee until very late last year when the media could no longer ignore that voters were attracted to him. Now Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson are gone, Huckabee’s still in the game, and McCain is leading the way.
Lumen, do you think that could be attributed to the fact that the democratic candidates aren’t substantially different on policy issues but that the GOPers were (major differences in fiscal and social issues)? And Guiliani – well he was kinda a “placeholder” in the early polls. I don’t know.
And apparently, “pledged” delegates aren’t really pledged delegates. I think all this gives too much room for corruption in the system. Can you envision the Hillary machine working day and night to blackmail, bribe, or otherwise coerce enough delegates to steal this thing?
Rotten. Yep, quite literally in fact. A rotten banana republic.
Then there’s those putting pressure on the superdelegates to change their votes, particularly the superdelegates, not to mention the money spent courting them.
Vivian, I just came across this article regarding Washington state’s experience with caucuses versus primaries:
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