An orderly presidential election process

By Todd Rokita
Indianapolis Star
22 June 2008

Although Americans have turned their attention to the heated race building toward November, we still have many lessons to learn from the history-making 2008 presidential primary.

For such a nation-shaping decision, the method through which we select our candidates for commander in chief is in dire need of improvement. Our primary process is too front-loaded -- 34 states plus the District of Columbia voted in January or February, more than three times the number that did so in 2000. This not only creates a prolonged campaign, our current primary schedule also runs the risk of disenfranchising almost half the population.

In recent years, a number of plans for reform have emerged, such as a national primary, the "Delaware Plan" or a graduated random presidential primary system. Each strategy shows promise, but none provides a comprehensive solution that will ensure an equitable way to select hopefuls for our nation's highest office.

As president of the National Association of Secretaries of State, I'm an advocate of our own solution to the problem -- the NASS Rotating Regional Primaries Plan.

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David Broder's President of the Swing States of America

By Rob Richie
Fairvote.org
9 May 2008

David Broder, dean of inside-the-Beltway political pundits, often accurately captures the insiders' conventional wisdom. That's what makes his Washington Post column yesterday so reveavling. He casually calls North Carolina and Indiana "throwaway" states unworthy of the attentiont they received in Democratic primaries on May 6th.

"Throwaway"? Is this American democracy we're talking about?

Sadly, the answer is yes. Broder's appalling observation is based on the cruel reality of today's Electoral College system: a few states matter, and most states are so "unimportant" that they are "throwaways." The people of North Carolina and Indiana -- and indeed most of the nation -- may care about America just as much as the people of Ohio and Iowa, but fundamentally they are irrelevant. They live in the wrong place at the wrong time, and Broder is right that the major nominees will at most make token appearances in those states after securing their party's nomination.

Indeed, following this logic, Broder suggests these states shouldn't even count in primaries. He audaciously suggests that "In a sensible nominating system, these states would never become important battlegrounds. Lots of people complain that Iowa and New Hampshire enjoy disproportionate influence because of their place at the start of the process. But both are closely contested in November -- not throwaways."

For Broder, it's sensible that if a state is irrelevant in November it should be irrelevant in the nomination process. Long live the POTSSOA -- President of the Swing States of America.

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Zigzagging Toward November

New York Times
5 May 2008

As the Democratic presidential contest slouches forward, the Republicans are wise to look ahead to 2012 and try to invent a better mousetrap than the jumbled primary system that they find occupying, if not entombing, the Democrats. The G.O.P.’s rules committee has offered a plan that attempts to find a better balance between “retail” politicking in smaller states and the inevitable big-money, heavy media campaigning in larger states.

The goal of a more measured and conclusive pace is well worth pursuing. But the scheme is already in doubt as Republican leaders in the larger states denounce it in advance of debate at the party convention in September.

Consider the crazy-quilt experience this year, in which a glut of states rushed forward to attempt a de facto national primary in February. Record turnouts have been followed by increasing confusion as various “showdown” votes roll forward three months later for the two Democratic finalists.

Twenty-year-old Democratic rules, rooted in arcane formulas about past Congressional turnouts, have awarded caucus and primary delegates proportionately, with, so far, a winner never quite winning and a loser never quite conceding. By now, the vaunted Democratic superdelegates are wary of their grand power to play Solomon by settling the competition in late August.

The Democrats cannot rewrite their rules in midrace, but voters must hope that some lessons are being learned and that appropriate changes will be attempted the next time around. In the Republican plan, the sticking point is that smaller states representing a quarter of the Electoral College clout would always vote first as a group (with, yes, Iowa and New Hampshire retaining their prom-queen status as separate openers). Three balanced groups of larger states would follow, rotating their positions in subsequent elections.

This, at least, is closer to a rotating regional primary system as proposed by the National Association of Secretaries of State — the model this page endorses.

Efforts to devise a better system may well founder in the tooth-and-claw state of politics, and with separate state parties and legislatures willing to freelance parochially this year against national party plans. Still, if only in the name of democracy, voters and candidates are entitled to dream of something better.

This year shows why primary system must change

By Joshua Spivak
San Francisco Chronicle
10 February 2008

After years in which party presidential nominees are effectively chosen before most voters cast their ballots, 2008's primary season has been a refreshing breath of fresh air, with real races lasting through most of the primaries - if not beyond, as we might see with the Democrats. However, it is also clear that despite this year's excitement, the two parties should look to seriously revamp their nomination systems to avoid alienating their electorate. This year's primary campaigns highlighted glaring deficiencies, one of which - the superdelegates - might still cause a giant headache for the Democrats. But if reforms are not made, future presidential races may erode trust in the selection process.

There are two main reasons that 2008 saw an exciting election, both of which have nothing to do with the candidates or issues. The first was an anomaly. It was clear since President Bush was re-elected that 2008 would be the first time in more than a half a century where neither an incumbent president nor an incumbent vice president would receive one of the parties' nominations. The lack of an incumbent who could take credit or blame for the actions of the Bush administration radically changed the dynamic of the elections. No candidate was truly able to run on, or be forced to defend, the Bush record. The other side of this coin was at work in the Democratic primary. Even though the race was shaped by an anti-Bush sentiment, the Democrats were not able to run simply as the most electable, as the opponent, whose strengths and weaknesses were unknown. The 2012 election will probably return to the more traditionally structured environment, with the 2008 winner almost certain to seek re-election.

The other major event was the nationwide rush by states to move up their party primaries to an earlier date - resulting in more than half the voters casting their ballot on Super Tuesday. The states moved up after absorbing a painful lesson: The presidential primaries could be effectively over after only a small fraction of the voters had their say. Therefore, the states decided that the earlier the vote, the better the chance that candidates will pay attention to them. The rush to early primaries has caused an immediate problem for the Democrats. Michigan and Florida, as a punishment for moving their primary elections way up, have been stripped by the party of their delegates. Whether to rescind the punishment and seat these delegates may actually be the question that decides the nomination. If it grants Michigan's and Florida's demands to have their delegates seated (which would substantially help Hillary Rodham Clinton), the Democratic Party is opening itself up to every state jumping to the front in 2012. If the party denies the two states their convention votes, it may cost the nominee two key swing states in November.

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Raucous system seems immune to change

By Matt Stearns
McClatchy Newspapers
26 September 2007

Florida's defiant decision to hold its presidential primary weeks earlier than both national parties dictate highlights one inescapable fact: There's no easy fix for this mess of a presidential nominating system.

Parties set rules and dates, but self-interested states ignore them with little fear of meaningful consequence or much concern for the national interest. Would-be reformers tout a variety of fixes, which the states find lacking. Congress suggests that it might step in, but the Constitution might not allow it.

"States are tripping over each other to get to the front lines, and most of them are operating within the rules of the parties," said Ryan O'Donnell, spokesman for FairVote, a non-partisan electoral-change advocacy group. "Clearly, the parties are failing to control the process."

The problems of the current primary-and-caucus nomination game are well documented: It's too fast, too expensive and each election cycle is accelerating the absurdity. Plus, Iowa and New Hampshire, two idiosyncratic early-voting powerhouses that barely reflect the rest of the country, play an outsized role in this electoral Survivor.

The still-unsettled 2008 primary schedule is the worst one yet: With states leapfrogging one another to gain influence and attention, neither Iowa nor New Hampshire has formally scheduled its vote, which both states are determined will remain first and second, come what may.

This chaotic system encourages states to jockey for position and leads to overcrowded primary days, forcing campaigns to rely on barrages of negative ads, expensive television buys and quick fly-ins rather than engaging in substantive discussions with voters one state at a time over many months.

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The Problems of Regional Primaries

Written Statement on Federal Regional Primary Legislation
Submitted to the Senate Rules Committee

By William G. Mayer
Associate Professor of Political Science
Northeastern University
19 September 2007

Finally, I would like to call the Committee's attention to a number of problems with regional primaries, however they are adopted and enforced. First, though regional primaries have recently been proposed primarily as an antidote to front-loading, it is by no means clear that a regional primary system would actually reduce front-loading. It depends on how the system is designed. The proposal formulated by the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS) provides a good example of the problem. The NASS calendar allots separate weeks to Iowa and New Hampshire -- and then, one week later, the first region would vote. In other words, one week after New Hampshire, delegates would be selected in twelve different states on the same day. By comparison, most recent presidential nomination calendars have started up more slowly. Immediately after New Hampshire, there have typically been several weeks in which only one or two states held their primaries or caucuses. The NASS calendar, to be sure, would be less front-loaded after that: There would be a month off before the next region voted. But this is small consolation to all the candidates who cannot afford to campaign in twelve states, even twelve contiguous states, just one week after the race begins and who will therefore not be around when the second region goes to the polls.

Another major problem associated with regional primaries is that they would confer a significant advantage on any candidate who happened to be particularly strong in whatever region went first.27 As Table 1 indicates (it is located at the end of this statement), region is a very important variable in explaining primary outcomes. Almost every recent presidential candidate has done significantly better in one region than in the others. In 1976, for example, Gerald Ford won 60 percent of the vote in the average northeastern primary, as against 35 percent in the average western primary. In the same year, Jimmy Carter won, on
average, 62 percent of the vote in the South, 35 percent in the Northeast, and 21 percent in the West. In 1980, Edward Kennedy won 53 percent of the vote in the average northeastern primary, but only 18 percent in the southern primaries.

In the contemporary presidential nomination process, the order in which primaries are held matters. Indeed, that is why front-loading developed in the first place. And thus, which region goes first could have very important implications for which candidate gets nominated. In 1992, for example, Bill Clinton's candidacy would likely have been doomed if the southern states had voted last: for the first five weeks of that year's delegate selection season, Clinton didn't win a single primary or caucus outside the South. Supporters of regional primaries implicitly acknowledge this problem, for regional primary proposals invariably include a provision that rotates the order in which regions vote or determines that order by lot. But rotation and lotteries do not eliminate this problem -- they merely ensure that the direction and recipient of the distortion will vary, in a random manner, from one election cycle to the next.

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Parties need to reform presidential primaries

Observer & Eccentric Newspapers, Mirror Newspapers and Hometown Weeklies Michigan

Michigan has taken a prominent role in the presidential primary leap-frog game. Last week, Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed a bill moving Michigan's primary to Jan. 15, in defiance of Republican and Democratic party threats to not seat delegates selected before Feb. 5 and a pledge by leading Democratic candidates to not campaign in the state.

For many years, the presidential chase for delegates has begun with caucuses in Iowa and a primary in New Hampshire. Leaders in big, industrial, urban states like Michigan have long complained that small, rural Iowa and New Hampshire do not reflect the majority of American voters. They have argued that by the time more representative states actually vote, a decision has already been made.

The Democrats tried a mild reform by adding Nevada and South Carolina into the mix. But New Hampshire was miffed that the Nevada caucus was scheduled to precede the New Hampshire primary and vowed to move its date back to retain its traditional role.

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Primary Chaos

By Eliza Newlin Carney
NationalJournal.com
10 September 2007

The fight over just how early states may schedule their presidential primaries has spilled onto Capitol Hill, where some lawmakers are calling for a complete overhaul of the nominating system.

"The present system has clearly broken down... into chaos and into full irrationality," declared Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich., at a Sept. 6 press conference in the Capitol. Levin joined his brother, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., to tout legislation that would schedule concurrent primaries, spread over a four-month period, in six regions of the nation.

The Democrats were responding to an increasingly heated scheduling dispute that has pitted party officials in Michigan and Florida against national party leaders at the Democratic National Committee. State-level GOP officials from Michigan and Florida, as well as from several other states, are engaged in a similar tug-of-war with the Republican National Committee.

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