Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION The Anywhere Machine How to Improve the Democratic Nominating Process

I know we don't usually have political debates here at Legion World. That's probably a good thing. My intention in starting this thread is to share my thoughts on some of the flaws in the process that we just went through, and get some ideas from others on how they perceived it. I will disclose up front that I supported Senator Clinton, and some of my opinions may be colored by that. I intentionally waited to post this until after the candidate was selected, in hopes that this won't turn into people taking positions simply because they favor one candidate over the other.

1. Super delegates should be eliminated. The process needs to be as democratic as possible. Four months ago, when it looked like Senator Clinton had the possibility of winning with super delegates pushing her over the top of Obabam's lead in regular delagates, the pundits and a couple of cable news channels were throwing fits. They proclaimed that it was unfair and undemocratic. They calmed down quite a bit when the super delagates started to break Obama's way, and demanded that she drop out just as soon as the super delegates put him over the top.. But, they had it right the first time. Super deleagates are the antithesis of democracy. It would have been wrong to have changed the rules in the middle of this cycle, but the DNC certainly should make this change before 2012.

2. It's time for caucuses to go. Each state should have a primary. Caucuses are outdated. The idea of coming together with your neighbors is nice. It's a quaint concept and I'm sure it leaves those who paricipate with a good feeling about having been involved in a community process. It probably even improves the communities that participate. In the end, though, too may people can't participate because it takes too long, they have to work, they can't find somebody to watch the kids, etc. Elections should be about including as many people as possible. Primaries do that better than caucuses.

3. Settle disputes before the voting starts in a way that doesn't disenfranchise voters. Wow, we all have egg on our faces over the Michigan and Florida fiasco. I'm not going to say if I think the state's party leaders or the DNC were at fault. There were some people who tried to blame the Repubican leadership in Florida, and that was just a cheap shot. I hope everyone learned a lesson. It's much easier to compromise before the first vote is cast. Trying to come up with a good solution in the middle of the campaign, when it is a decision that can determine the outcome, kind of rips the party apart. Not a very good strategy for the general election.

4. It's time for Iowa and New Hampshire to give up their "first in the nation" status. I propose regional primaries with the early start date rotating each election cycle. When I first started to think about this, I thought a single day national primary was the way to go. I changed my mind, though. A longer process does have the advantage of vetting the candidates better. It does force them to compete in the less populated areas, which is important. The fact that the pundits started to urge Senator to Clinton to drop out five months ago, kind of proved Florida and Michigan's point. The states with later primaries wouldn't have had a voice at all if not for Clinton's tenacity (some may say it was bull headed). The Republican voters in the late states had no say at all this time around.

Here's how I think it should work. The country should be divided into six geographical regions. Region one has its primary the second week in January. Region two goes two weeks later. Region three votes two weeks after region two, and so on. The order in which the regions vote should change each election cycle. Yeah, it might take your state 24 years before it is able to go first, but it beats Iowa taking the lead each time. The campaign season would last 12 weeks, which I think is a reasonable amout of time. It lasted way too long this time, but if you make it much shorter, the candidates don't get vetted as well.

5. There should be a 50/50 split between open and closed primaries. My dad is an independent who lives in Missouri. It makes him furious that he can't vote in primaries. Other states allow it. There are advantages and disadvantages to either method. If both parites had totally open primaries, all candidates would run to the middle and there wouldn't be much difference between the ultimate general election candidates. If all the primaries were closed, we would end up with a candidate who wouldn't have much of a chance of attracting independents in the general election. The contenders should have to prove themselves in both types of contests. If you accept my idea of regional primaries from #4, you could rotate this aspect as well. In 2012, regions 1, 3 and 5 could be open. In 2016, regions 2,4, and 6 could be open.

6. Eliminate "winner takes all primaries" in favor of apportioned delegates in all states. "Metrics" became the buzz word of this campaign. All polls report a margin of error. An election is really just another poll. It's the official poll and doesn't report a margin of error. In my opinion, what happened in the 2000 Florida Presidential election is that the difference in the number of votes fell within the voting process's margin of error. We had a statistical tie. The point I'm trying to make is that the math you chose makes a difference in close races. If you mix "winner take all" and apportioned delegates, it is very possible for a candidate to get the greater number of votes, and still lose the election, in a very close race. That's a situation we should want to avoid. Apportionment is more democratic, therefore that's the way we should go.

Now, I'm quite certain that none of my ideas will actually be implemented by the Democratic Nationa Comittee. I do think they are great ideas. I had to share them with someone, so you guys here at Legion World got elected. I hope I didn't bore anyone too much. Any thoughts to the contrary? Any other ideas that got generated by the long primary season?

Three words. Planetary Chance Machine.

LOL. Yes, they had it figured out.

(If I'm allowed to chip in)

Simply have all the members of the democratic party have a vote and cast it, in one day.

So the party memebership chooses its leader and saves a hell of a lot of money organizing all those conferences and speeches and stuff.

I'm tired of all the media coverage of it all, but I'm glad there is finally a candidate. I find it ridiculous when CNN is calling the winner of a state's primary one second after the ballots are closed and there are 0% of precincts reporting in. I actually saw one night where the bottom of the screen said 0% of precincts reporting, and it showed both Clinton and Obama with 0 votes, and CNN was telling you the projected winner already. Cut it out!!!!

I'd also prefer that a state not split the delegate count, it should be all or nothing. If you get a majority of votes in a state, you get the whole blamed thing. And we shouldn't spread the primaries out over a what, 6 month period??

I would also get rid of "Super-Delegates". Unless you can fly and bend steel in your bare hands, you can't be a Super-Delegate. Why should their vote count the same as a whole precinct? No one deserves that kind of power!

And with Florida and Michigan, I don't care that they voted "too early". They just shouldn't have revealed the results of the vote until they would count (See, I'm a problem-solver...) What a fiasco that was. And Obama shouldn't have gotten "some" votes from Michigan since he opted to not have his name on the ballot. My name wasn't on the ballot and no one threw any votes my way... No one said Clinton should automatically get extra votes, just don't give those votes to anyone (they essentially would be "non-votes", like a vote cast for Richardson or Edwards earlier in the election ultimately ended up).

I was for Clinton over Obama, but this was a big, stinky mess. Yet again in our political process, someone can have a majority of the popular votes but not be the winner. I'm at least glad she threw her full support behind Obama, because the Dems wouldn't have a hint of a shadow of a prayer of winning in November if our candidate didn't have the support of oh, I dunno, about half the freakin' party...

I'm done ranting now.

The whole process has soured me terribly. For the first time since I turned 18, I'm going to vote republican... or not at all.

Nude jello wrestling.

That goes for the general election too.

In all seriousness, I like some of the suggestions you made Jerry.

I do like the idea of rotating which primaries are held first. I had read an early idea of selecting the president was to randomly select a state and then from that state's Congressional delegates, Congress votes for who should be president. The next year, another state is randomly selected with the state already picked not included. This would continue until all states had had a president selected from their Congressional delegation.

I also like the idea of having "none of the above" be a choice on the ballot. Then if None got the most votes, there would be a special election the next month and no candidate that was on the previous ballot could run in the special election.

I favor a one-day national primary, with small-populated states closing polls first, so they get to feel important as pundits analyze their votes first, and the 10 to 12 most populated states closing last, say midnight EST/9 pm PST.

That way we get all the drama of state-by-state results, and the big states bat cleanup without any of them upstaging another.

If need be, the smaller-populated states could go the day before.

No superdelegates, no winner-take-all; proportional representation based on turnout and participation. If only 3 Dems turn out to vote in Manhattan and 200,000 do in Wyoming (or vice versa for the GOP), traditionally party-loyal areas should not get the benefit of traditional party strength; that just plays into the Red State/Blue State divide.

Also, people should be allowed to vote in whichever party they choose as long as they vote in only one; that will reduce the power of the fringes that have too much say in the primaries; imagine how much better the past 7 years would have been if a sane moderate like McCain had been in instead of the Fraud we got.

Obama won by the rules, despite Clinton's attempts to re-define them until she got a hand she liked. The end result was a good one, but it's neither Obama nor Clinton's fault that we have the quirky rules we do.

NOTE To Clintonians: Last numbers I saw, Clinton's "majority" of the popular vote only existed in her speeches, not in the actual counts.

Feel better? It was a great rant. I think we all needed to get it out of our system.

MLLASH, you better vote.

I saw it reported a number of different ways. Who knows what the actual truth is?

Clinton's claim included Florida and Michigan voters who voted for her by name, and voters who voted for her by name in all other primaries. One of the scenarios used for this claim excluded caucus voters. CNN said that if you used the metric of voters who voted for an actual candidate by name, Clinton had more votes than Obabma and any candidate in the history of the primary process.

She still won if you included Florida and Michigan, and counted the initial votes of voters in caucuses.

Obama won in any metric that excluded Florida and Michagan.

He also won, if you included Florida and Michigan, and included second round votes in caucuses (which is the way it works in the rules).

So yes, there is validity to the idea that Clinton argued that the rules should change as things progressed. There may also be some validity to her claim that she ultimately ended up with the popular vote, depending on how you do the math. Politicians always want to do the math the way that favors them, which is why the whole thing needs to simplified. Counting votes in all the states and eliminating caucuses makes for easier math. I do think that if there had been full elections in both Florida and Michagan, Obabma would have erased the overall Clinton lead. I'm not arguing that the wrong person won, I'm just arguing that the way we got there was pretty messed up. None of this is Obama's fault. He didn't make the rules, and he did a good job of strategizing to make the most out of the complex rules. Clinton's insistance on sticking it out until the bitter end served the purpose of exposing a number of flaws in the process.

Absolutely agree with you Jerry, every politician favors the math that supports them!

I also agree that none of the overall mess was really Obama's fault (with the exception of not bothering to put his name on the Michigan ballot ). The fiasco that ensued both there and in Florida was definitely not caused by him.

I also have a concern that we now have a Democratic nominee who did not carry a single "large" electoral state (CA, TX, NY, etc.) Democrats need these critical electoral votes if they have a snowball's chance in heck of winning the general election!

That's why it was important for Clinton to back him & noty just to concede the nomination. It was an effort to unite the party again. It was obviously pretty evenly split by this historic primary.

I'd disagree strongly with the elimination of caucuses. Having experienced three Iowa caucuses firsthand now, they're actually one of the few things in the American political system that I'm not completely disenchanted with. I'd disagree that elections should necessarily be about including as many people as possible. That's certainly *one* value, but I'd suggest the level of civic partipation in caucuses versus primaries is far more valuable to a democracy than maximizing the raw number of people who get to punch in their vote. I'd favor mandating employers to give workers time off to participate in the political process, though.

I *do* think it's incredibly unfair that Iowa and New Hampshire always lead, however, and would strongly favor a system that rotates the order of primaries/caucuses.

EDE, Do you think all states should have caucuses instead of primaries, or do you like a combination?

Obama-Clinton showed how really segmented the country is, forget the red-blue. Obama carried the purple, the middle and more conservative parts of the party.

Democrats strongly out-number Republicans, have for a long time and yet the party can't get their rep elected. He survived two very boneheaded plays by his "ministers." Obama simply has the better chance of the two.

McCain's opening positions are very interesting to me. A shot at President Bush (concerning inciting statements made during the war) and a shot at Obama (concerning experience).

The first I think was brilliant. Bush supporters have nowhere to go with their vote and McCain distances himself without actually naming Bush giving himself better access to the middle ground. The second, doesn't logically follow to me. If there were no war, would Obama suddenly have the necessary experience? It's never possible to predict what drastic events might change the political scenery (9/11). We have to presume that anybody that has made it this far into the process has the best experience available at this time for whatever might happen, whether that be Obama or McCain.

This will be my 9th presidential vote and it is shaping up as one of the more interesting campaigns.

I think McCain will be a stronger candidate than most Democrats think he will be. The Clinton-Obama race was very much about personalities, experience, and demographics. The general election is shaping up to be much more about issues. Who do most voters want appointing Supreme Court justices, Obama or McCain? Should we stay the course in Iraq or begin to pull out? What's the best approach on the economy, hands off or more intervention? Should we raise taxes on higher income individuals and corporations to invest in healthcare and infrastructure or will this approach hurt the economy? Fairly traditional issues and divides seem to be defining the debate already. Most interesting to me, right now, is that by nominating McCain the Republicans blunted the impact of immigration policies, which otherwise could have been an effective wedge issue for them. It's definitely going to be one of the most intersting campaigns we've seen in years.

Interesting ideas. However it's important to remember that the primaries are internal mechanisms of the political parties. They are not a true election. The individual parties can choose their candidate however they desire, they do not have to even hold primaries. They could, if they wanted go back to the days of back room politics and simply have the party elders decide. Don't forget that most political parties do not have primaries. They select their candidates via caucuses or through other methods.

Another issue that always gets raised is that "everyone should be allowed to participate in whichever primary they choose." In fact they can, even in closed primary states. They simply have to become a member of that particular party! They can't, however, remain independent and still want to influence the decision of the political party any more than you or I should have a voice in deciding who should be CEO of Time Warner. We aren't stockholders in that company and so are not entitled to a vote. The primaries (and the caucuses)are solely about the party members choosing their leader NOT the public electing their president.

Depends on the state. Here in New Hampshire, a lot of people don't bother registering a party affiliation until the moment of voting (as I did during the primary, and then signed a card to switch back to undeclared a minute after voting).

After seeing the shenanigans that sometimes occur because of this (members of one party in a state that is a guaranteed win for the other party crossing over to vote for a spoiler candidate like Huckabee, Romney or Clinton, for instance, just to mess with 'the other guys'), I am not as enamored of that freedom during the primary selection as I was.

But I still prefer having the freedom to vote for a candidate whose message appeals to me, even if I generally vote for 'the other party.'

Set, I agree completely. My point is that people don't understand the purpose of the primaries and caucuses. Most feel that they are elections but they aren't. They simply are not intended to be anything other then an internal process for selecting the party's standard bearer.

First, Obama did not "not bother" to put his name on the Michigan ballot; all were on, and all candidates agreed to follw the rules and remove thier names. The only one who broke her word was Hillary, so including her "win" as-is would have only rewarded cheating (by both her and the Michigan party).

Second, Obama did carry Texas. Illinois is still a top-five state; he won that too. NC is also in the top 10. Even though he lost to Hillary in NY, CA and some others, he still enjoys advantages in most traditionally-Dem states, plus enjoys outreach in many states Dems have traditionally not done as well in.

Vee-

good points in technicality, but since the two parties have a lock on power, it is in my opinion incumbent upon them to become more open and accessible than smaller parties.

In 2000, I wanted to enroll as a Republican to support McCain, and made that decision months before the primary; I was told my change-of-enrollment would not take effect until after the general election. Obviously, each state has its own rules, and it does make sense that someone can't change parties three times a week... but primaries have become a vital part of the public process, and are physchologically public turf even if not in technicality as you point out; arbitrary rules that discourage genuie and informed participation may follow the letter of the process but undermine the spirit of democracy.

Kent,

Texas is actually considered to be divided in who won. Texas has a unique primary/caucus hybrid that we unofficially call "The Texas Two-Step". First there is a regular primary that decides two thirds of the delegates. Then, when the polls close, there are precinct meetings--essentially caucuses--to decide the other third. Clinton won the primary, but Obama carried the caucus vote. Even most Texans (myself included) were not aware of this till this year. I did attend a very crowded caucus for my heavily-Democratic-leaning precinct in the Westbury neighborhood of Houston and its vote was almost evenly divided between the two candidate, with Obama having a slight edge.

Another oddity in Texas is that when we register to vote we declare no political party. Party affiliation is chosen when one goes in to vote at the primary.

I promise that it's gonna be a kinder, gentler Kid Prime this election cycle.

That being said, any problems in the parties' nomination process pales in comparison with the farce which is the Electoral College. Watch for another "elected" president to actually lose the popular vote this time around.

This is not a slam against Bush, the EC is the law of the land, written in the Constitution, and so we have no choice but to support it, but it's an idea which is about 100 years out-of-date now, and it needs to be amended.

It should have been amended 8 years ago. After the fact, of course. Once again, not slamming Bush. Law of the land. Must be upheld until it's changed.

People are always trying to fight the last war when it comes to staging elections. The current state of the democratic nominating process is that it is a hybrid of 2 earlier reforms -- the first, following the civil right era, 1968 and Watergate, gave a LOT of power to individual voters (i.e., the riff-raff) through wide-spread primaries, pledged delegates and proportional delegate allotments. The second reform, in 1982 I think, upped the number of super-delegates to prevent the riff-raff from running away with the process.

Even some more context. As recently as 40 years ago, less than half the states even HELD primaries, and they were beauty contests to bolster the candidate's argument for selection by the delegates at the convention. This was back when you didn't know who the nominee would be BEFORE the convention. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey was the democratic presidential nominee even though he didn't win a single primary.

I think the outcome of this year's democratic presidential primary was AWESOME. You had an exciting race to the very last state with two great candidates. It brought out tons of new voters and generated lots of excitement. In the end, the PARTY had to select a nominee, which they have to do ANYWAY. Nomination campaigns are about winning the support of the PARTY, not all the voters.

I feel badly for Senator Clinton, but in the way I feel badly for a star athlete who gets over-confident and loses the race/game/whatever. She didn't pay enough attention to strategy, listened to advisors who didn't know what they were talking about, and ignored advisors who did. She was lazy, over-confident, profligate and ill-advised. Does the way she ran the campaign say anything about how she would have performed as president? I don't know. Maybe. Her mistakes were grave enough that I don't feel TOO bad about her not getting the nomination.

Having said all that, I think she is an oustanding politician and public figure. She ran a hell of a campaign, especially considering her back was up against the wall and she was out of money most of the time. I KNOW that she genuinely cares about the issues she advocated. I COMPLETELY respect the millions of voters and supporters who believe in her and I deeply sympathize with the disappointment many of them feel. In the end, the campaign was hers to lose, and she lost it. I can also say, from no little close personal experience, that Barack Obama is a fantastic guy, a man of integrity, and someone that supporters of democratic causes and policies should feel 100% comfortable voting for.

As for the nomination process, it's always gonna be a mess, if only because it is a hybrid of a private function (parties selecting candidates) and a public function (large numbers of people voting). It's a complicated mash-up of national parties, state parties, county parties, etc. It's hard to have a uniform system because the state and county-level party organizations are always gonna want to tweak the process to meet some objective they have (like awarding more delegates to districts with higher turnout, or whatever). I rather enjoy the variation and local flavor that this hodge podge allows. I grew up in Texas, so I think it is great to have a "Texas 2-step" primary + caucus. I think caucuses are great because they enhance party-building and bring out more dedicated supporters than a simple primary does. Is any of this perfect? Of course not. It's democracy. Perfection is for fascist totalitarian states!

In principle, the more we can shift decision-making in this country to the pseudo-Greek model of everyone in the community coming down to the market square and arguing about what to do, the better off I think we would be. And since caucuses embody that ideal much better than primaries, I think it would be better if everyone held caucuses. I don't think it would be practical to shift everyone to caucuses by the next election, though, so it's more of a long-term ideal.