Sound Politics Public Blog: Whither the primary?

January 18, 2008

Whither the primary?

Hey folks, I am working on an essay for an application to a Masters in Public Administration program, and I would be very interested to get the community's input.

My paper (5 page limit, unfortunately) is titled "Who's Coming To The Party: A Study in Representative Democracy," and addresses the purpose and direction of the primary election system in Washington. My advocacy may or may not be popular in this community: I oppose the attempts to make all primaries "Qualifying primaries," and support a "Nominating primary." I do not support top-two primaries or across-the-board nonpartisan statewide offices. I feel that this kind of system is leaning heavily towards a communist, one-party rule system rather than the supposed goal of more participation. I also feel that this would enable more "stealth candidates," as people would no longer be measured against a party's platform. I would be happy to discuss my opinions in greater detail individually, especially as I gather more research materials.

My rough outline includes a few main points. After setting the stage with a brief background history of primary elections and the status of the primary election dispute, I will individually analyze the pros and cons of the proposed solutions, and then propose a counter solution. At this point, I'm still in the fact finding stage. I am looking for two things from this community: Facts about nominating primaries vs. qualifying primaries, with pertinent information about the parties' objectives; and biased but respectful opinions (no ad hominem or Red Herrings, please) about what results your favorite primary system may have upon our political climate. In addition, I would accept any helpful suggestions for the construction of this paper.

Thank you.

Posted by Notagreener at January 18, 2008 10:05 AM | Email This

Comments

1. I oppose the attempts to make all primaries "Qualifying primaries," and support a "Nominating primary."

You mean, that everyone should have general election ballot access if they get a certain number of signatures, and if those signatures are gathered on behalf of the party, that the primary is used to decide which candidate gets to the general election for that party?

You mean, like how it is supposed to be? :-)

I do not support top-two primaries or across-the-board nonpartisan statewide offices.

Sounds good.

The Republican Party, generally speaking, supports all that. It's why they filed all those lawsuits. :-) It's also why they had caucuses in 2005 (in King and Snohomish counties) instead of using the unacceptable (then) top-two primary.

I frankly care a lot less about what results the primary system may have on the political climate than I do about rights. Forcing members of a political party to accept as their nominee someone who is not their collective choice is simply a violation of their right to association, period. Any system which does that is unconstitutional.

You can have a qualifying or top-two primary without that, of course, but how do you then solve the problem of having two "Democrats" on the ballot? And it's pointless anyway: why even HAVE a primary if its purpose is not to nominate? What we have here is really a two-stage general election; why do we need that?

And as you probably know, primary turnout is far lower, which means that in the first stage of this "general election," there's much less participation and representation.

And don't even get me started about the fact that we (re-)elected a Supreme Court Justice (Alexander) IN THE PRIMARY. That makes no sense WHATSOEVER.

Posted by: pudge on January 18, 2008 10:55 AM

2. This document can be a valuable reference for you if you don't already have it:

http://www.secstate.wa.gov/elections/pdf/2008PP/Nominating%20the%20President%20of%20the%20United%20States.pdf

I believe that we should do away with the presidential primary and choose our nominee by caucus only, regardless of whether the result is pleasing to the "party bosses". Continue to hold the major party's caucuses at the same time, to avoid crossover. Encourage everyone to participate in their party's caucus, and allow them to vote for their nominee and have a say in platform issues equally.

Posted by: Michelle on January 18, 2008 11:07 AM

3. The present primary system encourages manipulation and factions. Our current large presidential candidate field in the Republican party allows a candidate with only a small following to game the system and emerge victorious. The conservative wing of the party is currently divided between Romney, Thompson, Hunter, with the liberal Huckabee dragging away the normally reliably conservative Evengalical Christian voter.
This will allow McCain, who only has 25-30% of the party who want him (most of the rest strongly oppose him) to walk away with the nomination. John Kerry won the Democratic Primary with a very small fraction who actually wanted him.

If we moved to instant runoff voting this would all change. If the D's had it four years ago we would be talking about President Gephart.

We need to close the primary and move to instant runoff balloting as it would do the following:

1. Allow the parties to select their own candidates.
2. End the games of splitting one group to the advantage of another.
3. Reduce the costs as a single election could also serve as the runoff.
4. We would end up with concensus candidates, not fringe or marginal candidates.
5. Open primaries lead to the election of people who are centrists. If they have to appeal to both liberals and conservatives to win the primary, the all have to talk moderate. Closed nominating primaries result in candidates with real differences.

Comments?

Posted by: The Rock on January 18, 2008 05:13 PM