burden on those candidates campaigning. Clark, Dean, edwards etc had a better chance of winning with a primary system that was spread out (ie. Clinton's comeback) then a one day nightmare. Also with the amount of media buys, campaign travel, etc it would be unresonably expensive.

This idea would never work. You complain that TM tried to rush the primaries yet, you want to one up him by REALLY rushing them into one day.

The problems with why we lose isn't because of NH and Iowa, lets sharpen up. We have other problems we can deal with that can get us back into the WH etc.

Oh, and to those that say Iowa and NH are too liberal... uh' both are swing states (IA went red this time, NH switched) primaries in general only excite the party faithful (for us, the liberals!)

name recognition and corporate money. Remember who had the most money and national name recognition early on in the primary? Joseph Lieberman. Yuck!

Dean may have won a national primary later on because he got sooooo much media coverage and a lot of money. A national primary means that the corporate media and political donors will decide who our nominee is. I don't like that.

it would drain all the democratic donors pockets before we even get to the GE, that would really leave us even more vunerable.

someone like Jimmy Carter could never win a one day primary.

for everyone to vote on the same day. Its cost prohibitive. NH and IA are small states and it causea big headache to move. And they are both swing states now. So it isn't a good idea to piss them off.

I think there's a major error in your logic.

Kerry won IA and NH because he was the best candidate, with the best set of messages and persona, and organization and ability to raise money.

If you started in NC and Edwards won it, I still think Kerry still would have won the nomination so long as Democratic voters were seeing the candidates and making the decision based on the arguments the candidates were making about themselves.

NH and IA citizens aren't some rare bread of Americans who think differently from everyone else. They took into account the arguments and situation and picked Kerry. So long as there wasn't a home-towner in the race, Democrats all over the country were going to take into account a very similar set of circumstances.

I think the only way to get a different outcome is if you did something like a one day national primary where Democratic voters had to rely on (1) the media interpreting and mediating their relationships with the canidates, and (2) if voters merely got arguments through commercials. Then you might have gotten Dean, but Dean would have done worse against Bush, I'm sure.

before the nominee has been declared and has already attained the requisite delegates.

Why should only a few states determine our candidate?

I am so there! At least when I lived in Brooklyn there was usually still a few choices by the time the primaries got around to us. Now that I'm in the last state to vote, I haven't had a voice.

Single day with instant runoff voting works for me.

but the following week some larger states should be in the mix. There is no reason to drag primaries out til May and June, I'd say we could fit all 50 states in primary voting over the period of a month. I think we should allow all states except NH and IA to rotate spots if they want to, but there should be a mix of large and small population states in each batch.

In other words, make the four weeks following the NH primary a Super Tuesday of 12 states.

I voted for Dean in May here, long after he had dropped out, and the fix was in on Kerry. (fix = decision before I get flamed)

the Iowa and NH system allows for retail politics to provide a jump start to a campaign based on the success of retail politics. In a national system, only the well established would get the money they need to compete. And they would have to raise the money early. I think a system of regional primaries would be a better system. Perhaps do NH and Iowa and then split the rest of the primaries into 4 regions. Rotate those regions every 4 years for fairness.

a few months before the primary. The slots could be set meaning how many states would vote each week, and then the states positions would be drawn out of a hat. It would be different each cycle, would generate lots of interest, and one cycle southern states would randomly get put in the front, the next cycle it might be industrial states. Just whoever got pulled from the hat.

types of ranked voting systems. The one talked about most often, and which I think would be fine for a Primary is Instant Runoff voting.

In that case you literally check off candidates by preference. Me, had I been a Dem this last time, I might have gone: 1) Kucinich, 2) Sharpton, 3) Dean, 4) Moseley-Braun, 5) Edwards, 6) Clark, 7) Kerry (I would not have given Lieberman a ranking as I did not want my vote to count for him.)

Once all the ballots are in, you add up all the first place rankings. No one got a clear majority in that round? Then the candidate with the least number of votes is out, and those ballots favoring him/her and resorted according to the number 2 rankings. Totals for all remaining candidates are reassessed. Still noe clear majority winner? Drop off the fellow with the least votes again, reshuffle his/her ballots, and check the new totals. This is done until there is a clear winner.

Scroll down past the fraud 2004 info and you will find an example of an electronic IRV ballot. Further down the page is a section on IRV and other types of ranked voting.

http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm

Iowa and New Hampshire are the last place where a Presidential candidate has to go up to a person and individually ask for their vote. People in Iowa and New Hampshire get to know the candidates in a way that you can't experience in the kind of big rallies they have during the general election. I want to see how a candidate does talking to a small group of farmers, workers, seniors or students as opposed to only seeing how he does talking to a big crowd during a generic campaign rally in a major city.

Small states give candidates with little money the chance to come out ahead. Jimmy Carter won the nomination because he was able to connect with enough individual Iowa voters to win the caucus and gain national media attention. Bill Clinton came in a surprise second in NH and went on to win the nomination because he was able to meet a lot of NH voters in person. Retail politics is a good thing and those are the only places candidates have to practice one-on-one retail politics. If we have a national primary all of that will be gone. It will be just like the general where the average person never gets the chance to talk to a candidate in person.

For that reason I think Iowa makes more sense. It has a much cheaper media market than New Hampshire. That allows candidates without much money the chance to do very well there. That way someone that doesn't get a lot of corporate money has a shot at winning the nomination.

It doesn't have to be Iowa and New Hampshire but I think having two small states go first makes a lot of sense.

I like the idea of small states having the first primaries, however I agree that there is a problem with IA and NH getting to choose the candidate before everyone else.

A 50-state primary would leave the candidates to focus entirely on New York, California, Texas, and the other big states, and totally ignore the 40 smallest states. There would be whole regions of the country that would have no say whatsoever, and it's pretty clear that NY, CA, and TX aren't mainstream for either party (for the dems, that would be letting New York, LA and SF pick the guy, which would be a recipe for DISASTER).

I think breaking the country into 5 or so regions and picking a smallish state to represent each region, then having all those primaries on the same day might be the ticket.

My picks are South Carolina, New Mexico, Iowa, Oregon, and New Hampshire to represent the southeast, southwest, midwest, northwest, and northeast. Interesting states with interesting histories, small states, all potential swing states.... good times.

I think you have a good point about large states becoming the focus under my proposed changes. That is clearly borne out in the general election campaign strategies. Not so sure that the same state should have the first primary edge in each region though.

Why not rotating. Sometimes it comes to the big states. But, I'm not sure that a large state should ALWAYS be locked out of the first round of the draft. We should shoot for balance.

I do like the large regions solution. Pulls it back from a state by state turf battle and but still allows a focus on a stronghold area strategy if desired.

Two step process though. Chosen regional state day followed by the rest of us on the same day.

Rotating states within a region could be interesting, or having the parties within a region get together to decide which state would be the nominee for the region, but make sure it gets rotated, so if it's Iowa one election cycle, it would have to be a different state like Minnesota the next time around.

If it was a big state, the delegates would have to be split, so it wouldn't be winner-take-all. So a second place finish in California which gets more votes than most small states is worth something, so winning California wouldn't be better than winning the other four states combined.

But yeah, the other 45 states on the same day, say, 3 weeks or a month later would be good. Enough time for people to really think about the candidates and enough time for candidates who did poorly to drop out, and people to research new favorites.

Public financing would also be awesome, so it wouldn't be an issue of who has a big house to mortgage. Each candidate could be given the same amount to spend wisely and strategize with.
 

For now just a wish list. The whole list is pretty dicey when it comes to actually getting people on board. But, I would like to discuss out the kinks before I pursue any of the options further. So far it's a pretty good list. Suppose I concede and keep it to small states (preferably still rotating)? How would you feel then? I'm open here.

Rotating small states would be good.

Maybe the largest state in the region could be exempted, or something.

If the votes were split, and it wasn't winner-take-all, then even larger states could participate, but there's something very genuine about the political process in Iowa and New Hampshire that it would be a shame to lose. Many people there like to go see all the candidates speak before they decide, and I think that's terrific, I'd just like to see some other states have a say too.

I've thought before that maybe each candidate could pick a state, and if they bomb in their chosen state, they're done, but what we're cooking up seems pretty good.



 

1) 5 regions
2) Each has either rotating or home choice of a state to run in a first day primary
3) 3 weeks later all remaining states vote. Sounds like a Real Super Tuesday to me.
4) Ranked balloting (see previous posts by GreenPartyVoter for more details). Rate the candidates in order of preference.
5) Proportional distribution of delegates. Death to "Winner Takes All".
6) Public financing of all campaigns to establish a level funding playing field

I think that it everything. Its not a full one day primary. But I think in a day we collectively came up with something pretty workable. Now, where is congress?

Any comments, criticism, etc?