When the Democratic parties of Florida and Michigan decided to hold their primaries in January, too early under party rules, the Democratic National Committee banned their delegates from the national convention. Even though their primaries were not to count, eight days ago the Party's 30-member Rules and Bylaws Committee reversed the ban and decided to assess each of the two wayward states a “fair” number of delegate votes.
So the fate of nearly 2.3 million Democratic presidential primary votes was decided by 30 party activists. In Florida, Senator Clinton received 56.5 pledged delegates and Senator Obama 36. In Michigan, where she won 55 percent of the popular vote, Clinton ended up with 36 delegates and Obama with 32. The Committee had hoped to satisfy the expectations of both candidates, but promptly encountered bitter criticism, particularly from the Clinton camp.
During the five months from the Iowa caucus on January 3 to the Montana and South Dakota primaries on June 3, Americans enjoyed, or suffered, detailed daily reports of campaigning and voting, winning and losing--a hotly contested race, more or less entertaining than a baseball season. A huge variety of state laws and state party rules determined when voters cast ballots for a candidate in either an election or a caucus. By the rules of some states, the state party was not even bound to honor the voters’ choice in selecting delegates to the national convention. Worse yet, the Democratic Party leaders and elected officials--the party’s aristocracy--cleverly arranged for themselves to have a vote of their own as so-called “superdelegates.” Except for themselves, of course, these democrats always demand an equal ballot for every other voter.
States vie for early primary dates in order to exert more influence in the nominating process because the early primaries tend to give the early winners the advantage of the bandwagon effect. When primaries fall on the same day, candidates often face difficult choices as to where to spend their time and resources. It seems that Super-Tuesday was deliberately created to increase the influence of the southern states.
Given the multitude and confusing variety of state and party rules and of differing caususes and primaries in the presidential nominating process, one has to wonder why there ought not to be a more consistent, efficient, and less expensive way of finding the most popular presidential candidate. Why not expand Super-Tuesday into a nationwide primary day for all states and territories? That would end the wild rush toward frontloading the nominating primaries.
We do not stagger the national elections over weeks and months. Yet, by the time we go to the polls, we usually have had plenty of opportunities to assess the candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. After all, Americans have the longest electioneering processes among all the world’s democracies.
The National Association of Secretaries of State has endorsed a rotating regional primary system, with the country split into four regions: West, Midwest, South, and Northeast. That would lower campaigning costs by restricting groups of primaries to contiguous regions and still give the candidates ample opportunities to address the voters in meetings and via the media.
Since 1911, 125 bills proposing a national presidential primary have been introduced, but none was ever passed. Both state governments and state parties do not want to lose the financial and publicity advantage of having their own primary day.
The inconsistencies, inefficiencies, and huge costs of the present hodgepodge of caucuses and primaries could be greatly mitigated with a national presidential primary. That, however, would deprive the American people of five months of political entertainment every four years--a spectacle unparalleled anywhere in the world.