It’s early January, eleven months from the general election. Already two small states have held primary-type elections, and already a total of four presidential candidates, two Democrats and two Republicans, have dropped out of the race. Now Bill Richardson is dropping out, too. I was seriously considering voting for him, but now I won't have the choice. By the time Oregon holds our primary in May, the two major-party nominees will be selected. They will probably be selected by the middle of February.
I say selected, because they will not be elected by the majority of voters of their respective political parties, but only by the majority of voters in a few states.
This system is not only insane and anti-democratic, it stinks.
The worst part is, in order to get a say in the primaries, states keep moving their primary to an earlier time, thereby extending the campaign cycle to the point that when the general election comes around, everybody’s so sick of both major candidates that nobody wants to vote, and nobody cares.
It’s time to reform the entire primary process, perhaps with regional primaries, or by prohibiting any state from holding a primary before May. I would rather have a say in choosing the nominee of my party even than in voting in the general election – that’s where the real choice is made. It’s bad enough that the Electoral College short-circuits one-person, one-vote; the current primary system eliminates probably half or more of the popular vote from the effective democratic process.
How broken does the system have to get before we try to fix it?
Hey, Seda-
ReplyDeleteGreat blog!
I wanted to mention the guess-reporting that happens, too. Like saying OBama won NH because of exit polling, but before the actual (Clinton won) count was in.
That scoop strategy also hurts us on the left coast on election day. Not specifically here in OR where ballots have to be mailed in time (or dropped off day-of), but when the news agencies report who's winning on the right coast and mid-west it influences not only how we vote, but whether we bother to vote at all.
If we dumped the electoral collage maybe we'd have more than two stinking parties in the debates. Ala France, tho "France" is as nasty a term as "liberal" these days (Lafayette and the Statue of Liberty are ignored). So ala the UK. Lots of candidates get lots of votes and the winner = most votes. End of story. And one would hope that with lots of candidates and votes the (stacked?) Supreme Court would have less reason to be involved.