Elaine Kamarck calls the current presidential nominating system "a mess."
Since 1972, the Republican and Democratic Parties have changed, amended, and refined their rules governing how their presidential nomination processes operate. Parties in states and U.S. territories schedule their own dates for their primaries or caucuses, spreading the presidential nominating season out over multiple months. The Republicans operate mostly on a winner-take-all delegate allocation system, while Democrats use a proportional system. Every presidential election year sees charges of the system being "rigged" and "unfair."
Could there be a better way for the parties to pick their presidential nominees?
A national primary?
What about a national primary, where the parties hold an election in all the states on the same day? Voters could choose which party’s primary to participate in, and vote for the candidate of their choice. The winners would then face each other in the national election in November. It’s not a new idea—in 1911 Alabama Rep. Richard Hobson introduced a primary bill in Congress, and President Woodrow Wilson endorsed the idea. Over 100 bills have been introduced since then, but all have failed.
As Kamarck points out, leaders from both major parties have always opposed this idea, and no vote on such legislation has occurred in Congress. Some key concerns include: in a multiple-candidate field, what happens if the winner doesn’t cross the 50% threshold? Would there be a way for voters to rank choice their votes? Would a national primary foster, or prevent, a candidate with little political experience but high popularity from winning? Would all the candidates be able to raise enough money in the preceding months (and years) to effectively compete in a national contest? And, what would a one-day primary event do to capable candidates who start out (in the current system) low in the polls but build momentum, delegates, and finances over the course of a long primary season (e.g., Jimmy Carter)?
Regional primaries?
To the degree that party leaders value a sequential primary/caucus calendar that gives voters longer exposure to candidates and allows "dark horses" to emerge, another alternative is a rotating regional primary. A Regional Presidential Primaries Plan was proposed by the National Association of Secretaries of State in 1999, and was introduced as a bill in Congress in 2007, which would divide the nation into four regions that would sequentially hold one primary for their states. The order would change every election cycle. New Hampshire and Iowa would retain pride of first place. Various similar plans have been proposed by the parties, often named for the state from which the party leader proposing the idea hailed. Ultimately, however, the national parties have determined that a reform along this line is just not a priority.
As Kamarck said, "absent some sort of meltdown in the current process, a more rational system is not likely any time soon." Getting every state political party, the national parties, and other stakeholders to agree to a significant alteration of the nomination process is likely an insurmountable challenge. And the idea that Congress could pass a bill requiring such a new process could easily run afoul of the Constitution. Are state political parties, as private associations to some degree, even subject to restrictions on their nomination rules imposed by Congress?
A peer review system
One concern about the current system is that it allows an outsider candidate who lacks (on paper), the traditional experience and temperament seen in presidential candidates to compete for, or even win, the nomination. In the old days, party bosses could ensure that their favorite candidate—typically a fellow politician of some stature and experience—would prevail at the convention, or in a split among various top contenders, another qualified candidate could be found as a compromise (see James Garfield’s nomination by Republicans 1880, or even James Polk, Democrat in 1844, the original "dark horse").
In the post-reform era, after 1968, the institution of the superdelegates was another way in which one political party attempted to recapture some of the quality control it exercised over the general voting public when choosing the party’s nominee.
But today’s system, as has been explained, is a plebiscite open to all voters across the ideological spectrum, with little or no control exercised by the parties apart from scheduling state-by-state contests (the state parties) and establishing debate and delegate selection rules. As Kamarck suggests, the successful campaign of Donald Trump—the least traditionally qualified presidential candidate in U.S. history—reopened the question of how to re-insert some degree of quality review in the process. "Today," she writes in Primary Politics, "most parliamentary democracies in the world—democracies that are every bit as healthy as our own—nominate their major party leaders through a party-run process in which peer review is a major consideration."
Kamarck emphasizes that removing or diminishing voters’ participation in nominating the parties’ candidates would be unwise if not impossible, but argues there are at least three ways to add some form of peer review into the current process, ways to give primary and caucus voters more information about the candidates they might nominate for president. These include superdelegates having a more formal engagement with the nomination process (in both parties) to act as sort of a final check against unacceptable candidate. A second peer review concept would be to have local political leaders endorse candidates running for delegates in their states—only candidates who meet a minimal threshold of support in the state could compete for delegates in the state. And finally, party leaders (in Congress, the party committees, etc.) could interview the prospective candidates before primary season begins, and then report out to primary voters what they (the elected officials and party leaders) think about the qualifications of the candidates. In all scenarios, voters wield the ultimate voice in the nomination process, but would be better informed about candidates’ temperament, experience, and views on democratic governance.
"Peer review is a commonly accepted concept in most professions," Kamarck writes in her Big Idea for Policy 2020 at Brookings. The political parties have a responsibility to vet the candidates who wish to vie for the White House under their banner in a way that retains participation of the electorate. "No one seriously believes we should go back to the old days of smoke-filled rooms," Kamarck says, but "both parties are equally vulnerable to the easy lies and blandishments of an autocrat."
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