The way we choose our Presidents (1 Viewer)

[timschochet]

OK this thread is not intended to be a partisan argument of any kind. I'm wondering if all of us, from Bernie lovers to Trump supporters to Gary Johnson fans can agree that the system of choosing our Presidents makes no sense whatsoever. Here are some of the problems I see: 

1. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, with relatively small and, with the exception of South Carolina less diverse populations exert way too much influence. Conversely, my state of California, the most populated state in the union, decides nothing. The races are over before we get to vote. 

2. Several states are caucuses. These benefit those candidates best able to game the system. 

3. Some states have delegates awarded by proportion; others are winner take all. This makes the winner take all states much more powerful. 

And so forth. There are minimum thresholds to get delegates, and all sorts of skewed rules depending on the state. The Democratic nominee is basically chosen by a small group of people mostly from states that will never vote Democrat on the general election. This whole process is messed up and I doubt it's what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Finally a 3rd party candidate has no chance being elected. 

Sugggestions for cleaning this up? 

 

[DA RAIDERS]

eliminate super delegates.

popular vote determines winner

 

[IvanKaramazov]

my state of California, the most populated state in the union, decides nothing. The races are over before we get to vote. 

Everything about the system is broken except for this part.

 

[NutterButter]

That didn't sound very fair and balanced

 

[lod01]

Ban the democrats and republicans permanently from holding any govt. office ever again. Force people to think for themselves.

 

[Scoresman]

1) Kick the South out of the union.  

 

[17seconds]

Agree that California already has enormous general political influence due to its size.  We have 53 members in the House as well.  You want the biggest say in choosing the Executive branch also?

Let's talk about much bigger issues like gerrymandering before we get to this one.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

OK this thread is not intended to be a partisan argument of any kind. I'm wondering if all of us, from Bernie lovers to Trump supporters to Gary Johnson fans can agree that the system of choosing our Presidents makes no sense whatsoever. Here are some of the problems I see: 

1. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, with relatively small and, with the exception of South Carolina less diverse populations exert way too much influence. Conversely, my state of California, the most populated state in the union, decides nothing. The races are over before we get to vote. 

2. Several states are caucuses. These benefit those candidates best able to game the system. 

3. Some states have delegates awarded by proportion; others are winner take all. This makes the winner take all states much more powerful. 

And so forth. There are minimum thresholds to get delegates, and all sorts of skewed rules depending on the state. The Democratic nominee is basically chosen by a small group of people mostly from states that will never vote Democrat on the general election. This whole process is messed up and I doubt it's what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Finally a 3rd party candidate has no chance being elected. 

Sugggestions for cleaning this up? 

The serious answer is that you have a whole bunch of different things conflated into one post.  For example, you are right that the founding fathers probably didn't have primaries and caucuses in mind, but the constitution doesn't say anything at all about parties and certainly not how those non-existent parties would select their nominees -- the current system didn't exist until the 1970s (I think).

You are right that caucuses reward candidates who can run a ground campaign and who have highly-motivated, disciplined voters.  That's a feature, not a bug.  The idea is that caucuses force candidates to demonstrate some on-the-ground campaign chops, which seems like a reasonable thing to select for.  Or so the argument goes.  

The "third party candidates can't win" is about general elections, not the nomination process.  It follows from the fact that we do winner-take-all elections.  There are other systems that would make third parties more viable -- have fun with the National Front party being a real thing from now on.  

 

[Quint]

eliminate the Electoral College.

 

[timschochet]

Please. Stop saying California decides nothing. California sets the agenda for an entire political party. The Democrats follow California's lead.

And, why should California have any influence in the primaries? It's not a swing state. It'll give all 55 votes to the Democratic party no matter the nominee. The Democrats could nominate Hitler's clone, the Republicans could nominate Thomas Jefferson, and Hitler2 will get California's vote. California should have minimal impact in decided either party's nominee. They'll only support the most liberal Republican who will not have the support of the national party, and whatever Democrat-it-doesnt-matter-we'll-vote-for-him-anyway.

If California wants influence, it should start by opening up its mind to perspectives other than brainwashed liberalism.

What difference does it make that we're not a swing state? And what difference that we're liberal? Why should either of these points, neither of which is a permanent situation, prevent us from having our say? We have the most people. 

 

[tonydead]

Steel cage royal rumble caucuses. 

 

[Rustoleum]

Why shouldn't some of the smaller states have a little influence on choosing who gets nominated? It certainly gets offset by the larger states determining the actual winner come November. I also don't see a problem with a mix of caucuses and primaries instead of a one-size fits all approach. If you try to impose a new national system at this point, I feel you are guaranteeing the status quo from that point forward. It will be set up so that the establishment candidates can't help but win.

The only really broken thing about the whole process is that all the candidates suck.

 

[timschochet]

BTW I am not advocating for California to choose first. Let's just mix it up some. Have a lottery; make it random. Sometimes Rhode Island could go first. Sometimes Minnesota. Or Hawaii. Every 4 years it would be a different order. 

 

[glvsav37]

Just have it be one big reality show....just like the brand new novel "The iCandidate" released in installments exclusively on the NoteStream iOS app.

The iCandidate is a unique interactive thriller about a political reality show to choose a potential President of the United States in which the reader has a key say in how the plot unfolds.In The iCandidate, eight finalists from all walks of life face the kind of challenges they might have to deal with in the Oval Office: • Will they use the nuclear button?• What will they do about ISIS?• How will they cope in a crisis?At the end of each round the reader gets to cast an iVote to help determine who stays and who goes home. It is democracy in its purest form, free from party loyalties, donor obligations and antiquated electoral practices. Get to know the iCandidates now in time for the first iVote on Super Tuesday - March 1 - and make your iVote count.In the novel, serialized weekly on NoteStream, the eventual people’s champion goes on to challenge the political establishment in an iCampaign for the presidency climaxing in an explosive finale in Washington on November 8. 

Yes...this is a shameless plug for the app I am associated with NoteStream

 

[Don Quixote]

A national primary with instant run-off voting would probably be the most equal.  Just including instant run-off voting would probably help a lot under the current system -- instead of requiring majority, maybe just apply it with a 10% floor, and re-assign votes based on IRV if a candidate is below 10%.

 

[FreeBaGeL]

It's really really dumb and arbitrary.  States dividing up their delegates differently (split vs. winner take all) arbitrarily makes some states more important for no real reason.  States break "ties" differently.  Handing out delegates via a coin flip.  People haphazardly separating little pieces of paper into only vaguely accurate piles.  Seriously?

It makes no sense, and it kind of reminds me some of the FIFA rules a bit.  A bunch of rules that were put in at a time due to technological limitations that for some reason have stood over time (tradition?) despite those technological limitations disappearing.

I can understand the concept of delegates 50 years ago when there wasn't a way to accurately count everyone's vote on a national level.  I can understand states coming up with different rules for how those delegates are handed out back when there wasn't an easy direct line of communication between every county in the country.

But those days are gone.  It's 2015.  We should be able to count up everyone's vote accurately and get an actual answer on who has more votes now. 

 

[msudaisy26]

The whole system is dumb, I am not smart enough to figure it all out. I think 3 changes would help. 2 are rather easy, make it easier to vote first, and make voting day a national holiday. Everyone that votes gets a form of compensation for voting. Whether it be an extra 200 dollars back on your taxes or an I voted tax break of 500 dollars or something. 

The other part is getting rid of the 2 party system. Then you don't have states that just vote for one side or the other. 

Oh yeah another easy fix is all states use the same rules when electing a national official . If it is a state official they can use their own system. 

 

[St. Louis Bob]

To get on the ballot you should have to win at least one Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Grammy or Silver Sow.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

I think I'm starting to be in favor of returning to the Conventions.

 

[timschochet]

Because California sets the party agenda in the first place. You can't run as a democrat unless you appeal to California already. it doesn't need to pick the candidates when it defines the party.

Why should the Republicans go along with this plan? It risks hijacking the platform to appeal to voters that will never matter in the general election.

You don't make any sense, Tim.

You are looking at this from a partisan POV and I am not making a partisan argument. I live in Orange County, one of the most traditionally conservative places in America. I have lots of Repubkican friends who would like to be able to vote on a candidate before he's been chosen. Even in this election, when there's been more of a race in the GOP than in years, there's still about a 90% chance that the California primary in June will be meaningless. 

 

[trogg78]

Let people vote with their phones.

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

To get on the ballot you should have to win at least one Oscar, Emmy, Tony, Grammy or Silver Sow.

If you win Louisiana, you're disqualified.

 

[Cjw_55106]

Tim, has this bothered you in the past? I don't recall you being upset about this in 2012. 

 

[BassNBrew]

1) Kick the South out of the union.  

Can we build a wall to keep all the Yankees out of here too?

 

[sho nuff]

Can we build a wall to keep all the Yankees out of here too?

They can then enjoy their vacations to Ohio.  Woohoo. BTW, we , the south, will also be heavily taxing bourbon shipments over the wall 

 

[AcerFC]

Should have listened to George Washington. That guy knew stuff

 

[The General]

Pick the one you'd most like to have a beer with.

 

[shader]

OK this thread is not intended to be a partisan argument of any kind. I'm wondering if all of us, from Bernie lovers to Trump supporters to Gary Johnson fans can agree that the system of choosing our Presidents makes no sense whatsoever. Here are some of the problems I see: 

1. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina, with relatively small and, with the exception of South Carolina less diverse populations exert way too much influence. Conversely, my state of California, the most populated state in the union, decides nothing. The races are over before we get to vote. 

2. Several states are caucuses. These benefit those candidates best able to game the system. 

3. Some states have delegates awarded by proportion; others are winner take all. This makes the winner take all states much more powerful. 

And so forth. There are minimum thresholds to get delegates, and all sorts of skewed rules depending on the state. The Democratic nominee is basically chosen by a small group of people mostly from states that will never vote Democrat on the general election. This whole process is messed up and I doubt it's what the Founding Fathers had in mind. Finally a 3rd party candidate has no chance being elected. 

Sugggestions for cleaning this up? 

Yeah.  Let everyone with a SS# log into a secure website and cast a vote.  Most votes win.

 

[Gr00vus]

California therefore has a 10% chance of being meaningful, yet represents only 2% of the states in the union.

Therefore, California is over-represented by a multiple of 5.

What's your complaint?

California has about 12% of the U.S. population. So you could say it's marginally underrepresented in the "10% meaningful" scenario.

 

[Gr00vus]

And California awards 548 out of 4763 total delegates, or 12% of the delegates to the Democratic convention.

I still don't think Tim is making any sense. He's got nothing to complain about.

I think his point is - by the time the convention rolls around the deal is pretty much done and Californians didn't have much say in the nominee. I can see both points. What you should be skewering him over is his unabashed advocacy of populism in this case and his unabashed aversion to populism in most other cases.

 

[timschochet]

I think his point is - by the time the convention rolls around the deal is pretty much done and Californians didn't have much say in the nominee. I can see both points. What you should be skewering him over is his unabashed advocacy of populism in this case and his unabashed aversion to populism in most other cases.

It's not about populism. I don't want Califorbia to have the first say or the only say. I really only used California as an example because it's a blatant one. But my main interest is in mixing up the starting states a bit. As I wrote it should be random. I'd its Hawaii one year that's fine. Just have a lottery or something instead of always Iowa and New Hampshire. 

 

[kwille]

Think of the money and effort spent. All so we get to witness and blather about a 2 year turd parade. Really F'n embarrassing. Think if we spent the same amount of time, money, and effort in our communities. 

 

[Gr00vus]

It's not about populism. I don't want Califorbia to have the first say or the only say. I really only used California as an example because it's a blatant one. But my main interest is in mixing up the starting states a bit. As I wrote it should be random. I'd its Hawaii one year that's fine. Just have a lottery or something instead of always Iowa and New Hampshire. 

Or they could, you know, stop playing silly games and just have all the primaries on the same day.

 

[timschochet]

Or they could, you know, stop playing silly games and just have all the primaries on the same day.

Then the most famous candidate always wins, and nobody campaigns outside of New York City and Los Angeles. That's not fair either. 

 

[BobbyLayne]

Robert Reich this a.m.

Bernie won Minnesota, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Vermont, and lost Massachusetts by a whisker. So the Bernie movement lives on (even though much of the media wants to discount it). Meanwhile, Trump took most of the Super Tuesday states, but Cruz got Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama (thereby becoming the Republican alternative to Trump). 

In effect, the next president will emerge from one of four political tribes -- Trump's authoritarians, Cruz's fierce right-wingers, Hillary's establishment Democrats, and Bernie's political revolutionaries. If America had a parliamentary system, these four parties would negotiate to form a government and a prime minister. But we don't, and only one of these tribes will win. 

The only group left out is the Republican establishment. They despise Cruz and abhor Trump. So where will they go? I think they'll join Hillary's establishment Democrats. 

What do you think?

 

[Rustoleum]

Or they could, you know, stop playing silly games and just have all the primaries on the same day.

I disagree. Part of the whole deal is letting some of the one-note whack jobs get their message out in a handful of states without wasting even more money than is done now, and then dropping out and getting out of the way.

At least I don't have to watch as many commercials leading up to the primary as the deluge leading up to the actual election.

 

[BassNBrew]

Or they could, you know, stop playing silly games and just have all the primaries on the same day.

Not going to happen.  Long and drawn out is what the media wants.

 

[msudaisy26]

So you are looking for something like a March Madness style?

Have a mini super Tuesday every time the vote. 

Group states into regions. 

Every 4 years a different region kicks off the elections. 

 

[avoiding injuries]

I'm more bothered by a few swing states becoming the deciding factor. Their votes are so much more important. 

 

[BassNBrew]

I actually like Tim's idea of rotating the order, although I still think it should be rotated between small states to reduce the impact of big money.

January: Iowa, NH, Alabama, Nevada, Oregon.

Feb: 8 mid sized states from various regions around the country.

March: Everyone else.

 

[John Bender]

Interestingly enough, Rubio was very close to Trump here in Virginia (which I believe is considered a swing state). Even though I will definitely be voting for Hills in the general election I thought about going out and casting a vote for Rubio just so we wouldn't have Donald as a candidate in our country.

I stayed at home on my ### because based on recent results, it seemed like it was a foregone conclusion that Trump was running away with this thing.  I'm sure I'm every thing that's wrong with the system and deserve criticism accordingly, but I decided to work a full day instead because I basically knew Rubio had zero shot.  Had we been the first state to hold an open primary - I'd have been there for sure and cast my vote for Rubio and Hills

 

[Gr00vus]

Then the most famous candidate always wins, and nobody campaigns outside of New York City and Los Angeles. That's not fair either. 

I'm not understanding your point here.

 

[Cjw_55106]

Interestingly enough, Rubio was very close to Trump here in Virginia (which I believe is considered a swing state). Even though I will definitely be voting for Hills in the general election I thought about going out and casting a vote for Rubio just so we wouldn't have Donald as a candidate in our country.

I stayed at home on my ### because based on recent results, it seemed like it was a foregone conclusion that Trump was running away with this thing.  I'm sure I'm every thing that's wrong with the system and deserve criticism accordingly, but I decided to work a full day instead because I basically knew Rubio had zero shot.  Had we been the first state to hold an open primary - I'd have been there for sure and cast my vote for Rubio and Hills

I don't know much about this early process, but how do you vote in both the Dem and Rep convention? 

 

[John Bender]

I don't know much about this early process, but how do you vote in both the Dem and Rep convention? 

Who knows, I didn't go. It's open here and I'm not registered with a party so I figured I could pick one or the other to vote with.  Maybe you could explain it to me.

 

[Cjw_55106]

Like is said, I'm not well versed. I thought you had to be registered with the party to vote and you could only be registered with one. 

 

[John Bender]

Like is said, I'm not well versed. I thought you had to be registered with the party to vote and you could only be registered with one. 

Ah yeah - same here.  Never voted in a primary before and no idea how it worked. I thought I could show and cast a vote for either or (or both)...but I figured both were foregone conclusions. 

 

[Tom Servo]

eliminate the Electoral College.

Or better yet, have the electoral votes handed out by who wins the congressional districts with two to the top vote getter state-wide. It would much better reflect the wishes of the population rather than having big cities tip the state to the Democrat party.

If ACORN wants to stuff the ballot in Chicago for Hillary, fine. It decides all of ONE electoral vote. I

 

[sho nuff]

Ah yeah - same here.  Never voted in a primary before and no idea how it worked. I thought I could show and cast a vote for either or (or both)...but I figured both were foregone conclusions. 

TN you show up and they ask which ballot you want.  Wouldn't let me vote in both....booo.

 

[Christo]

Robert Reich this a.m.

Bernie won Minnesota, Oklahoma, Colorado, and Vermont, and lost Massachusetts by a whisker. So the Bernie movement lives on (even though much of the media wants to discount it). Meanwhile, Trump took most of the Super Tuesday states, but Cruz got Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama (thereby becoming the Republican alternative to Trump). 

In effect, the next president will emerge from one of four political tribes -- Trump's authoritarians, Cruz's fierce right-wingers, Hillary's establishment Democrats, and Bernie's political revolutionaries. If America had a parliamentary system, these four parties would negotiate to form a government and a prime minister. But we don't, and only one of these tribes will win. 

The only group left out is the Republican establishment. They despise Cruz and abhor Trump. So where will they go? I think they'll join Hillary's establishment Democrats. 

What do you think?

Yep

 

[Captain Cranks]

We need to bring back the Salem witch trials except instead of testing for sorcery, we'd test for stupidity.  Those who survive get to vote.  

On a serious note, the media is a huge issue, IMO.  They're steering the results by giving certain people more coverage than others.  Trump even went as far to say in an interview, 'I haven't had to spend much money because you people keep asking me to come on your shows'.