Go Start Anew -- Reforming the Nomination Process

by publius

One overlooked aspect of the DNC’s admittedly clusterf***ish meeting this weekend is that things could have been far worse. Consider this — what if the meeting had actually mattered? What if the actual nomination had depended on how the DNC handled Michigan and Florida? That, my friends, would have been ugly. Really, really ugly. And frankly, I don’t see how it could have been resolved legitimately at that stage (or at the convention).

For that reason, the Democrats actually dodged a bullet here. The nomination has essentially already been decided. But if it hadn’t been, then things could have become extremely messy.

The broader lesson here is that the Democrats (and Republicans too) need to get their procedural houses in order before 2012. The primary selection process is need of a drastic procedural overhaul — and this election provides a perfect excuse for comprehensive reform. In fact, I’d like to see “primary reform” on the netroots agenda in the months and years ahead. In that spirit, below is a short list of the most obvious problems/recommendations:

Replace Iowa and New Hampshire with Rotating Regional Calendar

The Michigan/Florida debacle is a direct consequence of Iowa and New Hampshire’s unholy monopoly on the early elections. David Broder aside, there is absolutely no justification for allowing the same two states — states without major urban centers or diverse populations — to host the first elections every cycle. And it’s especially unwise given that one of these states holds caucuses and forces all candidates to embrace ethanol-first policies.

I’d prefer some sort of rationalized rotating regional calendar (e.g., 5 states in Week 1, 7 states in Week 3, etc.). In fact, I’m not sure any individual state should have an election day all to itself. That’s not how the general election works, and individual contests don’t test for the type of skills candidates need in national presidential elections. But regardless of how it’s structured, the order of the states needs to rotate from cycle to cycle. As Senator Levin correctly noted, these states don’t have a God-given right to go first.

Kill the Caucuses

These should simply be eliminated — no ifs, ands, or buts. The Clinton people are right that they are disenfranchising. If you are (1) old; (2) have small children; or (3) work at night, it’s a lot harder for you to sit around the high school gym for hours listening to others talk. And even if you’re none of these things, caucuses still sharply increase the “costs” of voting. If, by contrast, you can just walk in and walk out, you’d be more likely to go vote.

If there are local political issues that need to be debated, fine. Caucus about them all you want. But the actual presidential election part needs to be carved out and converted into a primary.

Kill the Superdelegates (Metaphorically)

While we’re at it, let’s get rid of these guys too. The whole superdelegate concept seems illegitimate to me (in a normative rather than positive sense). Indeed, the Democrats dodged a bullet on this front as well — things could have been worse. Even though superdelegates will ultimately decide this year’s outcome, Obama has a pretty clear (not huge, but significant) lead in pledged delegates. Thus, the superdelegates aren’t “robbing” anyone.

You could imagine, though, a much closer election with superdelegates splitting more evenly. And that situation would be a total disaster — one that would be a mockery of democracy. For one, the decision would be made by unaccountable party hacks that no one’s ever heard of. Second, the decision would likely be based more on deal-cutting and chits than on principle.

The point is that the superdelegate concept creates terrible incentives. Even worse, it creates the conditions for a true intraparty meltdown in the case of a virtual tie (indeed, we got a glimpse of that this cycle). For this reason, I would recommend eliminating them entirely. But if the Democratic rabble is deemed unfit for democracy, then superdelegates should at least consist only of elected officials — no DNC officials allowed. We need some modicum of accountability.

These are just off the top of my head. Others?

Comments

[redwood]

how about we go the other way on the caucuses, giving people 8 hours off to participate, national holidays for voting, daycare centers, grilled vegetables, the whole shebang? geez, its that really how you spell it?

[Sebastian]

Sheesh, I take off two days to go to Vegas and I come back to find Clinton gambling with the future of the Democratic Party.

The key thing that we need to commit to (and this showed up in 2000, 2002 and 2004) is that you have to make election rules well in advance and you absolutely must stick to them when it comes down to it. It is impossible to maintain the seeming of fairness if you try to tinker with the rules once the votes are cast. At that point it becomes possible to know exactly how your rule-changing will help or hurt you and the urge to tweak that toward your favored candidate is almost impossible to resist. Humans are too good at post-facto rationalization.

[Bruce Baugh]

Redwood, it still wouldn't help for a lot of folks. You'd have to mandate the break time nationally, and then you'd have to attend to the situation of people who really can't afford to lose a day of work and also time-sensitive processes that need someone to tend them. (This includes rocket science, drying concrete, people needing constant medical supervision, and a lot else.) You'd still have problems for people who can't devote extended periods of time to any activity (like people recovering from various illnesses, just for starters, plus folks like my friends just getting started with treatment for severe sleep apnea, and so on), and like that.

Gary Farber makes some great arguments in favor of caucuses, and I can see his point. But insofar as the goal is to get as many Democratic voices heard as possible, primaries are the way to go.

Publius, in addition to the things you list - all of which I agree with - I'd want to make sure there's PR about procedures for appealing policies in advance and a much clearer, firmer rule about challenges made after the fact.

[Benjamin]

I agree with those things on paper but I have qualms

1) Such a system would greatly favor people with high name recognition and boatloads of money. Say what you want about Iowa but if they had not taken the time to get to know Barack Obama one-on-one, Hillary would have swept everything. Regardless of whether you think that was the right outcome or not, as everyone pointed out, our party benefits from fighting the nomination at least a bit. A sweep for Obama if he had won NH would have been bad. Same thing if Hill had won Iowa. Same thing happened in 2004. Without Iowa, John Edwards would never have been on the scene in 2008 and influencing the nomination the way he has.
I understand the idea that it is not fair for a state to always go first but there are clear drawbacks to multi-states primary right off the bat and Iowans do know how to vet candidates.

2) Caucuses do not always disenfranchize people (see Maine where people could vote by proxy) and are very useful in terms of party building. As Kos pointed out a few days ago, an hybrid system in every state would help gathering name and energy for the party while opening the results to a larger population.

3) The SD system as is now is ridiculous. That someone like the moron from the VI who changed his mind twice in three weeks is allowed to have such an impact on the nomination is outrageous. That said, the system was created for a reason, and I don't see anything wrong with guaranteeing a spot at the convention to, at least, our elected officials such as Governors or Senators. That may even reward states that elect Democrats vs those who don't.

All to say that while I understand your reform proposals are grounded in principle, in real-life things are different. There are good reasons for every messy piece of the messy puzzle and there are flaws with what seems on paper an ideal system.

[Benjamin]

PS:

While I hope President Obama will direct the DNC into that reform direction, I do NOT want this to be the focus of the netroots for the time being.
First, we have an election to win. And secondly, this would end up being played as a proxy for the Hillary/Barack wars. People would start projecting their candidate on every system and would judge based on what impact it would have had if ...
Better let those passions die down and let's talk about it next year.

[Bruce Baugh]

Benjamin, I've seen proposals for assembling blocks of states that include states with various features: low-population relatively rural, major industrial, and so on. It'd need a lot of work and testing to make sure each block was in fact comparable, but then that's true of anything. And then the idea is that one could arrange them in any order and get the benefits of our current system without the liability of the same states dominating every time.

[Bruce Baugh]

Sebastian, is it okay if we blame this all on your not paying attention? :)

[ken]

Eliminate caucuses.

Hold primaries and count all the votes.

Revise the delegate allocation by districts to remove the unfair influence the all black districts have on the party. Revise the demographic allocation of delegates to reflect the actual demographics of the states they are representing.

Keep the superdelegates as is. With or without them it is possible for two or three candidates to go to the convention without the needed majority of delegates to win on the first ballot. Super delegates provide a cadre of people who know how to horsetrade and that is what is required when no one has a clear majority.

Right now the Democratic party is in danger of becoming a permanent minority party. If they don't change then no matter what the republicans do the democrats will be unable (deservedly so) of winning a national election.

[Callimaco]

You are dead wrong about the first four primaries -- it's not just IA and NH, there's also now SC and NV. Those four primaries spread over a few weeks in relatively small states makes it possible for lesser know, lesser moneyed candidates to get in the race. (Or, let's put it this way: No Iowa means no Obama.)

Perhaps there's some way to broaden the pool of states to begin the process, but in principle beginning with a one smaller state at a time series makes very good sense because it keeps the process open to smaller name, less well known candidates.

Now I agree with rotating regional primaries after that. That makes a lot of sense. But to demand of small time candidates that they compete right off the bat in a regional primary just ain't right. If that had been in place this year then Clinton would be the nominee.

[ken]

Oh, one more. Rotate the primaries, but by region instead of by state.

So when New Hamphire votes, then so do the other states in its region. California votes with Oregon and Washington. Texes votes with New Mexico and Oklahoma. The midwest all votes on the same day, etc.

[publius]

a couple of thoughts on that and then to bed.

first, I don't think you can base everything on obama. this system also brought us kerry -- (not awful, but not the strongest either, i think). the point though is that we need to look more systematically and outside the lens of this particular race. on balance, is beginning with individual states good or bad and why.

second, i'm not completely opposed to beginning with individual states. I can see why retail politicking is a good thing at first. But even if that's right, i think it's clear that those individual states need to rotate. but is suspect few disagree with me on that last point.

[Harald K]

ken: "Super delegates provide a cadre of people who know how to horsetrade and that is what is required when no one has a clear majority." Well, that is one way of solving the problem. A better one is to actually ask the voters. Really, it's not so difficult: On my workplace, all internal votes, from the photo competition to election of board representative, are taken with ranked ballots. In case of no outright majority (really, in all cases) it is resolved with something called Schwartz's rule or CSSD. It's deep mathematical election theory magic, and I dare say very few can explain why it works so well, but around here we respect mathematics :-) Just like all voters don't need to know arcane rules for delegate distribution, all voters don't need to know the math here. People just rank the candidates from best to worst and voila - you have a winner.