Primary Problems & Solutions
I’ll be closely following the results of the upcoming primaries, but I’m as interested in the system we use to elect presidents as in our final choice for president. If we improve the system, we’ll have better presidents well into the future.
My concern is that for a variety of reasons, and despite a patch here and there, the primary process is becoming more not less broken. One can argue whether Iowa and N.H. should be first in the process, but it’s hard to argue against the merits of Iowa’s and N.H.’s retail politics, politics that allow relatively unknown candidates to make their case directly to concerned and involved voters. Most important, they can do so without a lot of money.
The fly in that ointment is that during this election cycle national campaigning among the well-known candidates began at the same time that retail campaigning began in Iowa and N.H. That drew attention away from Iowa and N.H., but even more important, the nationally broadcast debates and the incessant handicapping of the races on the national stage influenced the process in Iowa and N.H. The question of who is electable, based on the latest national poll, got asked much too often.
I propose three changes. First, the states that follow Iowa and N.H. in the primary process should reverse their moves to have their primaries closely follow Iowa and N.H. Most of these states will see less of the candidates than they otherwise would have, which seems to be the exact opposite of what was intended. If that happened, Iowa and N.H. could move their caucus and primary elections back to more seasonable dates.
One thought is that each state’s primary or caucus should be scheduled based on population, from smallest to largest state. The small states would establish the trends and weed out the weak candidates, the larger states, with their rich delegate counts, would be the king makers
Second, I propose there be no nationally-broadcast debates between the candidates until well into the primary season, to give low-budget, unknown candidates maximum chance to show their wares in the small, early states, before becoming overwhelmed with national attention.
Third, we must have some sort of independent organization that schedules and moderates the debates. The media must be excised from control of the debates.
