Democrats Getting Closer to Dumping 1st of the Election Season Iowa Caucuses (user search)
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  Democrats Getting Closer to Dumping 1st of the Election Season Iowa Caucuses (search mode)
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Author Topic: Democrats Getting Closer to Dumping 1st of the Election Season Iowa Caucuses  (Read 4509 times)
MarkD
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,131
United States


« on: December 22, 2021, 04:52:47 AM »
« edited: December 22, 2021, 05:25:38 AM by MarkD »

Let's just get rid of all caucuses in one fell swoop, and improve the whole nominating process while we're at it. Here's an idea that I've talked about several times before, and because of some criticism I received for my original idea, I decided to revise it a little bit. We need a constitutional amendment adopted to create a schedule for when states can hold presidential primaries. The schedule should be "front-loaded" with small states and territories going first because that affords a greater likelihood that underfunded candidates can compete via "retail politicking," instead of trying to raise and spend the most money.

Require all states/territories to hold presidential primaries only, no more caucuses.
Prohibit any state/territory from holding a presidential primary before April 1 (of leap year).

Allow only the smallest states/territories, which have just 1 or 2 seats in the U.S. House of Reps, to hold primaries in April. This would mean (given the upcoming apportionment of seats for the next decade) Alaska, American Samoa, Delaware, District of Columbia, Guam, Hawaii, Idaho, Maine, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virgin Islands, West Virginia, and Wyoming could all choose any date in April for their primaries. (The amendment would probably also stipulate that the New Hampshire law that says their state must be first in the nation would be void.) (By including the 5 territories, which I forgot to do when I previously discussed this idea, I am including greater racial diversity for the primaries held in the month of April.)

Allow the medium-sized states, which have 3 to 9 seats in the House, to hold primaries in May. The states which could do so would be Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Connecticut, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and Wisconsin. These states could choose any date in May for when to hold their primaries.

Make all of the largest states wait until June to hold their primaries. That would include California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. Again, these states could choose any date in June. The majority of delegates to the national conventions would not be selected until June. (Maybe we could even stipulate that the state(s) with the largest delegation of all to the House must wait until the last week of June, whereas all the other large states could hold primaries earlier in June.)

(In the long haul, some states would change their presidential primary schedule in coming decades. For example, after the 2030 census, Arizona would almost certainly change its date to June instead of May, because it will have 10 seats. Colorado might eventually do the same. Michigan and New Jersey - given their long-term population trends, in the last few decades and presumably the coming decades - might eventually end up with only 9 seats each, and then they would change their primary dates to May instead of June.)

With our current, existing system, the nominations are usually already assured by March, and we have to wait an agonizing amount of time until the conventions are held, which doesn't serve any good purpose that I can think of.
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MarkD
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 5,131
United States


« Reply #1 on: December 25, 2021, 09:57:55 AM »

Taking your points in not quite the order they were presented in (I've already responded to Stateboiler by PM, so this is for the rest of you):
First, you need to establish what political parties are. That's going to have a basket of unintended consequences and many Supreme Court cases.

Second, you need to establish what political party primaries are. That's likewise going to have a basket of unintended consequences and a few Supreme Court cases.
Do you think people are going to have a difficult time understanding what is meant by political parties and presidential primaries? Don't we have more than a century and a half of experience with the former, and more than 50 years with the latter? You know, before the Sixteenth Amendment was adopted, the word "income" never appeared in the Constitution. And there it is, the Sixteenth says:
Quote
The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.
But the word "incomes" was not defined by the Sixteenth. Wow! How are we supposed to figure out what does "income" mean? That's so ambiguous that it's going to unleash a flood of Supreme Court cases! Every word in the Constitution ought to be clearly be defined in the Constitution, so that there's no confusion in the future.

Third, you have to dictate to the parties (which are private organizations) some kind of "thou shalt nominate this individual if receiving _____ in the primaries", which means you need to come up with the winner mechanism or how votes are counted, which probably means unallocated delegates due to dropouts or an RFK 1968 scenario are going to be dictated how they'll vote similar to how Electors in the Electoral College are now instead of "our guy lost, we're going to back the winner". This is an unintended consequence.
No, we don't have to be precise about any of that. By not discussing it all, in an amendment that schedules presidential primaries, we leave it to the discretion of each political party to choose how to direct the results of the primaries into a nomination process. The political parties of today and in the future can continue doing what they already have been doing, or they can choose something else.

Fourth, you need to come up with a schedule agreed on by mostly all that is going to be in place for decades unless further amendments come.
This point almost seems like a train derailment posing as a coherent statement. I'm not sure I completely understand it. Any proposed amendment, of course, needs to have 3/4s of the states agree to ratify it, or else it ends up in a garbage can. And yes, there can be future amendments to adjust or refine what I am proposing.

Seventh, are you requiring elections for federal office primaries to follow this calendar or just the election for president?

Eighth, if you apply this primary law to all federal office primaries from point 7, do these primary laws now also apply to special elections?
Some states already have a different date for the presidential primary than for the primary election for all other offices, and they can continue to do that. More states can choose to do so as well, if they want. This proposal will not interfere with the other elections at all. That makes your eighth point moot.

Fifth, you've just established the political calendar for every political party in the country, not just the Democrats and Republicans, and dictated to all of them that they must use primaries when third parties largely don't due to state law in most cases not giving them access to one and also because they're highly susceptible to entryism in primaries for non-party members, which is why forcing parties to have open primaries de facto violates their 1st Amendment right of association. But if you state all political parties must use primaries on a defined calendar, you've forced every state elections board in the country to give every political group a primary. This is something neither Democrats nor Republicans want or desire. You've also effectively killed the raison d'etre for the New York fusionist parties as they would be required to nominate the winners of their primaries for office instead of co-nominating the Democrats and Republicans they choose to do so (an unintended consequence of my 2nd point).

Sixth, in light of my 5th point, you've just established political legitimacy for all third parties that follow this calendar and process, meaning they should have input to the election system and would be discriminatory if they didn't. This is something neither Democrats nor Republicans want or desire and would be an unintended consequence.

- skip -
In short, you're well-meaning but your proposal is incredibly flawed out of the starting gate even before you get to the details.

I'm just trying to start a conversation. There are more details to be worked out, and that's fine. For example, we could stipulate that the schedule for presidential primaries is being outlined for which two political parties got the most votes in the last presidential election, and other smaller parties have the option to continue handling their nomination process in whatever way they want. I'm just trying to start a conversation. You've given me things to think about, and more people here can chime in and suggest other things that need to be addressed, and we can address them. I'm just trying to start a conversation.
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