Presidential Primary Reform
The American Presidential Primaries. Over four moths of constant elections. In fact in 2016 the primary season lasted from the Iowa caucuses on February 1st to the Washington, DC primary on June 14th. Contests are often decided by the time of the late May to June primaries making citizens whose states primaries are in those late months, votes don't matter. The 2016 Democratic and Republican primaries were both considered very close but were still decided well before all primaries have taken place. Hillary Clinton became the presumptive Democratic nominee on June 6th with still six states and D.C. yet to vote. These states make up over 16% of the population of the United States. That means 16% of the countries vote did not matter in the 2016 Democratic primaries. In the Republican primaries nine states primaries took place after Donald Trump became the presumptive nominee on May 5th. These states are over 21% of the total American population. 21% of America's vote did not matter in the Republican primaries. It is unacceptable that this many of Americans vote did not matter in a presidential primary election. Similar to the electoral college the primaries are not one person one vote but each state chooses a certain amount of delegates based on percentage of registered Democrats or Republicans to the national number. An easy fix to this problem would be to adopt a similar solution to mine for the general presidential elections. The last major issue with political primaries is the super delegate issue. These people can vote with the elected delegates when nominating a parties president. Since these people are not elected the practice of having super delegates is obviously undemocratic. Also, there is no the same way for how many delegates a candidate receives when winning a state. It can be winner take all like the electoral college, winner take most, or proportional in addition to the super delegates for each state. For example in the 2016 Wyoming Democratic primary Bernie Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton by 11.3 percentage points. But the candidates somehow split the 14 pledged delegates for that state and Clinton had more overall delegates because all 4 Wyoming super delegates supported her. This is not fair to Wyoming Democrats.
My Plan:
Step 1: Parties are required to base the number of delegates for each state in presidential primaries on the proportion of the state party membership to the national one. This is done to make sure that all votes matter equally in the country. Parties currently have strange systems for how they come up with the number of delegates per state.
Step 2: All presidential primary elections will be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June. This lets all party members vote equally regardless of the state that they live in. It also generalizes the date so candidates do not have to endure four months of elections but only one day. It also prohibits candidates from basing their whole platforms on the issues of the first couple states that hold elections.
Step 3: A candidate will take all of the delegates of each state that they win. This is done to prevent the Wyoming example as noted earlier from ever occurring. It makes only one process available for awarding delegates instead of the current three or four.
Step 4: Parties are required to award at least 5% of their total delegates to the candidate that wins the national popular vote. This makes sure that candidates campaign on national issues and not just issues of the biggest states. It also prohibits a scenario of a candidate winning the popular vote but losing the nomination.
Step 5: All delegates must be elected and have to be representative of a state, territory, nationwide vote, federal district, or the party members from abroad categories. This ends super delegates and the practice of unpledged delegates.
In all my plan will make all votes mean the same regardless of when and where the votes occur. It also ends the undemocratic superdelegates. I am a little concerned that this plan gives to much authority to the federal government over political parties but what do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
The next post is not a reform is the process of ending American imperialism and colonialism. No promises with timing for the next one, I expect it to take me a long time.
My Plan:
Step 1: Parties are required to base the number of delegates for each state in presidential primaries on the proportion of the state party membership to the national one. This is done to make sure that all votes matter equally in the country. Parties currently have strange systems for how they come up with the number of delegates per state.
Step 2: All presidential primary elections will be held on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in June. This lets all party members vote equally regardless of the state that they live in. It also generalizes the date so candidates do not have to endure four months of elections but only one day. It also prohibits candidates from basing their whole platforms on the issues of the first couple states that hold elections.
Step 3: A candidate will take all of the delegates of each state that they win. This is done to prevent the Wyoming example as noted earlier from ever occurring. It makes only one process available for awarding delegates instead of the current three or four.
Step 4: Parties are required to award at least 5% of their total delegates to the candidate that wins the national popular vote. This makes sure that candidates campaign on national issues and not just issues of the biggest states. It also prohibits a scenario of a candidate winning the popular vote but losing the nomination.
Step 5: All delegates must be elected and have to be representative of a state, territory, nationwide vote, federal district, or the party members from abroad categories. This ends super delegates and the practice of unpledged delegates.
In all my plan will make all votes mean the same regardless of when and where the votes occur. It also ends the undemocratic superdelegates. I am a little concerned that this plan gives to much authority to the federal government over political parties but what do you think? Let me know in the comments below.
The next post is not a reform is the process of ending American imperialism and colonialism. No promises with timing for the next one, I expect it to take me a long time.
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