The national party organizations have actually tried to impose some discipline on the state party organizations this year, which I believe is unprecedented, and may mean that serious reform is coming down the pike. Of the two parties, the Democrats have been more courageous. Several states, including Florida and Michigan, have been stripped of all their votes at the coming National Convention. The Republicans have been half as courageous, stripping the respective states of half their delegates.
Everyone knows what we ought to move to: a system in which the states rotate with each election, so that every state gets to go first eventually. The question is how to arrange that.
My SDP colleague Jason Heppler proposes a single national primary day.
Perhaps holding a single primary election day for the entire nation would be useful. The primary could be scheduled in the middle of the year and conventions can be held immediately afterward, giving candidates and parties ample time to conduct a general-election campaign. This way, no single state like Iowa or New Hampshire can tank someone's run for office and this forces candidates to present their policies (not soundbites) to voters in all states. This has the added benefits of taking an emphasis off early campaigning and removing the problem of front-loading. If a clear winner doesn't emerge, then delegates at the convention can debate and decide the winner (like things were before the Age of the Image).
That is indeed a proposal worth considering. But I think it is much better to string the nomination process along a half a year period. We would have a lot better chance to see the strengths and weaknesses of the various candidates emerge.
My original proposal was to divide the states into groups, each including states in various regions and of various sizes. Each group would hold a common primary on the first Tuesday of each month from January or February to June or July. The order of the groups would rotate with each election, so everyone gets to go first eventually. A variation would organize the groups according to region. Professor Schaff doesn't like this idea.
First, regional primaries are more likely to produce regional candidates, surely not good for the polity. While the first primary would rotate among the regions, some region must go first and a candidate from that region would have a decided advantage. Second, regional primaries would favor those with the most money to buy television advertising. Likely the regions developed for such a system would be so large as to make retail politics of limited use. Thus candidates would be encouraged to engage in mass appeals through mass advertising.
I respectfully dissent. If regions are inclined to vote for regional candidates, they will do so no matter how the systems is arranged. No doubt some candidates will benefit if a region in which they are strong goes first; but that advantage will disappear as soon as the next region takes its turn. By the second or third month of the election schedule, voters in each region will be thinking nationally.
Second, regional primaries would favor candidates with less money or name recognition. Candidates would have a full month to cover each region. Where states are itty bitty, like in New England, they could cover the ground by bus. It's alright to be itty bitty. Regional primaries would have the same effect as the electoral college: they would force candidates to focus on groups of states rather than on the nation as a whole.
So lets divide the election year into seven primary dates, from January to July. Then divide the states into seven regions of seven states each (and one of eight, with maybe Wyoming), rotating with each election. I think that would keep the best features of the present system, and supply its defects. A variation would be to increase the number of primary dates and corresponding state groups. We could have two state primaries (or caucuses) every week from January to July.
I think there is a very small chance that such a system will be adopted. But if it is, let's call it the Blanchard Plan.
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