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 personally chose Obama based totally on sex appeal and what he orders for breakfast…was that wrong?
hillary is getting what goes around comes around, clintons have done dirty tricks, from day one.
In the interest of fairness, I’d like to point out that back-room fat cats stinking of bourbon and cigars managed to pick FDR, and several other good Presidents, too boot. Back-room fat cats get such a bad name nowadays. 😉
Yes, anon, and the authors do point that out 😉
Yes, it’s the worst possible form of government, except for all the others.
Mouse – we aren’t talking about the government here. It is about process.
Along with where they stand on the issues, I also consider electibility and how the candidate either helps or hinders the Democratic cause.
Caucuses are indefensibly dumb. Open primaries aren’t far behind – though I seem to recall that open primaries are pretty popular ’round these parts.
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.
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.
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.
I can’t argue with that.
How do we get a better process? The only way to keep the front-loaded primaries from making an early decision, leaving out millions of voters, is to have a national primary. But to have a national primary means the candidates have to spend tons of money in 50 states all at one time and be in all 50 states all at one time. Expecting them to do that means we really are not able to get down to the nuts and bolts of their view and, more importantly, we don’t get to see them at their best. They are human, after all.
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.
pat – Larry Sabato recommends not a national primary, but a series of regional primaries. See here.
Interesting comments.
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.
Sorry about the misspells: prohibit (instead of prehibit)…
and their (instead of there) labor bosses
Thanks for the discussion of national primaries and also, Vivian, your mention of regional primaries – I’m going to go look through that post. I have been wondering myself why not have a national primary for both parties as it gets rid of this “momentum” subjective analysis by the media, it also cuts down on the infighting that hurts our party in the long run. There have got to be drawbacks to that though, like someone mentioned about the $. But there will always be a $ argument. People now who have good ideas can’t compete b/c of the $ involved. I want to hear a better reason than that I guess.
idealistlefty….I like your comment.