There has been a great deal of conflict within the respective major political parties about how the presidential primaries are scheduled. A number of states have broken with the national parties and have scheduled their primaries earlier than they were allowed to do so. For these transgressions, these states have symbolically lost their representation in the electoral college system that selects the president.
The Dem’s have shut out Michigan and Florida — together representing a significant number of delegates — while the GOP has punished several states by halving their delegations. The Democratic candidates have the further restriction of being unable to even campaign in the forbidden states, raising the significant spectre that these states will fall wholly to the GOP in 2008 and party organizations there will collapse.
It’s bad enough to live in a ‘red’ state and to know that my preferences won’t receive majority backing. I can’t imagine how demoralizing it must be to have any opportunity for representation eliminated before the contest season has even begun. What were they thinking at the national level? How is elimination of representation a productive or constructive means of conflict resolution?
Most importantly, why aren’t all state primaries on the same weekend anyhow? The state Democratic primary in Texas is a pathetic rubber stamping of contests held months previous. It’s very difficult to convince someone that they have any significance at a primary when the party nominee is decided before the vote begins.
Wouldn’t that be a lot more exciting and get more people involved if the whole country was doing it at once. How much simpler G-O-T-V would be! It completely eliminates any perceived advantage that some “early” states have, but provides so much more relevance to the primaries in the other 46 states. This would radically change how candidates run for president, and may also overwhelm the ability for any one group or organization to fix the result, as well.
We would have to advance to an ‘instant runoff’ style election popular in Europe, where each person indicates their top three preferences. In the event of a tie, they use the secondary and tertiary results to determine an immediate winner of the contest.
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