Democrats to Shepherd States in Primaries?

by Paul Fidalgo // Published January 13, 2010

Tom Schaller at FiveThirtyEight has a must-read interview with a member of the Democratic National Committee's Change Commission, charged with offering solutions for reforming the presidential nomination process. I posted last week on some of the proposals that we knew of at the time, most importantly having to do with the removal of free will from superdelegates, but Schaller makes some more news with his discussion with DNCer Jeff Berman--and it's news that sounds pretty encouraging to FairVote.

Berman tells 538:

[A] major timing recommendation of the Commission is for the states to organize their dates around regional or sub-regional groupings, to address frontloading that occurs within the window. This would include the DNC Rules Committee looking at offering “bonus delegate allocations” for states that schedule their contest in these groupings. The idea here is to try to make the calendar more rational by having states cluster together on a voting day so that the candidates can campaign efficiently in contiguous states, as opposed to situations which we’ve seen in prior cycles where candidates had to campaign for contests held on the same day on both the East Coast and the West Coast. It’s just more efficient for candidates to conduct bus tours and other retail campaigning and to purchase advertising in overlapping media markets when multiple contests are held in contiguous states.

I like the sound of this, because not only does it tell us that the party is interested in doing away with the madness that is the rush to be on Super-Duper Tuesday, but because it offers incentives to states who comply, rather than relying on the usually-ineffective slaps on the wrist for wayward states.

Even better, of course, would be a system that rotates these regional contests (preferably in increasing size, as in the American Plan) so no particular group of states has a monopoly on any part of the calendar. But alas. Even with this new revelation, the same states are still being given unjustified special status, always holding their contests before everyone else. No change has been made along these lines, and indeed, New Hampshire has made it very clear of late that they have no intention of letting anyone (other than Iowa) get in front of them in line. 

Still, this news from Berman makes these baby steps toward reform a little closer to toddler steps.

Comment on Democrats to Shepherd States in Primaries?

Current Discussion

  • The current system is unfair both to voters in early-voting states and to voters in later-voting states, for the following reasons: Early voters have the entire field of candidates from which to choose; however, the candidates for whom they vote may drop out before the later primaries and the convention (in fact, most candidates will), and states that do vote for dropping-out candidates have essentially elected uncommitted delegates, with no way to go back and vote for one of the remaining candidates. Worse, on the strength of early votes, a candidate may become a (or the) front runner, then suffer a minor scandal that makes them less attractive in the general election, but not enough delegates remain unselected to alter their nomination. Late voters have only the remaining candidates available, and in fact, all but one may have been mathematically eliminated by the time their election is held, so they are disenfranchised within their party. The solution, I believe, is to require that all current primaries in a party be non-binding "beauty contest" votes, with a final, binding ballot scheduled for all states on the same day, about two weeks before the party convention. If the parties can agree to have them on the same day, even better. This will remove the need for candidates to drop out because their support does not materialize early, and prevent "coasting" by candidates who have gotten support early, since the primary that actually chooses the delegates will be held again at the end of the primary season. In fact, eventually, state parties may decide to drop the current spaced-out primaries, or cut them back to caucuses, saving taxpayer money, since caucuses will not have to be as securely counted as they are now, being non-binding. An additional benefit would be that candidates will no longer have to start campaigning two years before the general election, and the voters would not become as tired of the campaign season.
    Posted by Allan Richardson, 2010-07-19 17:21:14 (2 years ago)