The Primary Problem

The Primary Problem
The New York Times
2 September 2007

This is shaping up to be an ugly presidential primary season, and the candidates have not even started getting ugly yet. The Democratic Party is vowing to strip Florida and Michigan of their delegates if those states insist on pushing their primaries up to January. The Republicans are also threatening to take delegates from Florida and Michigan, along with three other states. Iowa and New Hampshire, whose laws require them to vote before other states, may respond to the interlopers by moving their own primaries into early January, or even late 2007.

The presidential primary system is broken. For years, the nominating process has unfolded in an orderly, if essentially unfair, way. The schedule has worked very nicely for early-voting states, which have had a steady stream of would-be presidents knocking on their doors, making commitments on issues like the Iowa full-employment program, also known as the ethanol subsidy. The losers have been states like New York and California, which have often gotten to vote only when the contests were all but decided. Issues that matter to them, like mass transportation, have suffered.

There have long been calls for reform, but the national parties have been reluctant to tinker with the system. The Democrats made a small change this time around, allowing Nevada and South Carolina to join Iowa and New Hampshire in selecting delegates before Feb. 5, the end of a protected window for early-state voting. The parties, however, have resisted more ambitious overhauls that have been proposed.

Many worthy reform proposals are circulating. One calls for dividing the nation into four regions and having them vote in sequence: one in March, another in April, and the last two in May and June. In future elections, the regions would vote in a different order. Unfortunately, a leading version of this plan calls for Iowa and New Hampshire to keep voting first. Another appealing idea, the “American Plan,” starts with small states and moves onto larger ones, so long-shot candidates can build momentum, but it does an especially good job of ensuring that voters from all states have a reasonable chance of voting early in the primary season.

The two parties should begin a discussion of the best reform proposals now, and plan on having a new system in place for 2012. The presidential nominating process is too important to American democracy to be allowed to descend into gamesmanship and chaos.

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