S.C. GOP Primary Will Still Be First in the South
Written by Sam on August 8th, 2007
S.C. Republican Party chairman Katon Dawson is expected to announce Thursday that the 2008 S.C. presidential primary will be Jan. 19, sources close to the party and campaigns told The State.
Dawson will be in Concord, N.H., on Thursday, where he will officially announce the date at a news conference, S.C. GOP executive director Hogan Gidley said.
This will bode well for Thompson and/or Gingrich, should they decide to officially enter the race.
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I have to admit, all this hop-skotching is getting ridiculous. I wish states would chill out and stop trying to cut to the front of the line.
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I’m a strong believer in national primary day. since no iowa and new hampshire have to much power, and those states aren’t representive of the entire US
9
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Primary system definitely needs to be reformed.
How about a rotating regional primary system? Or, some sort of random-state rotating system?
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Senator Alexander just came out with a bill to try and fix the mess:
http://alexander.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressReleases.Detail&PressRelease_id=1234&Month=7&Year=2007
9
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Candidates should have face-to-face meetings with voters to make things happen. A national primary day would prohibit this from happening and would give more power to the media and to the Clinton News Network to decide who gets the nomination.
..and I guess what I’m saying is that Iowa-New Hampshire rule is better than a national primary day.
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yes but thanks to the iowa primary we have dumb things like ethenol and other farm subsidies.
11
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There have been three different presidential primary reform plans already proposed. None of them are perfect and a regional primary system isn’t even the best of the three though it is the simplest.
The Regional Primary System endorsed by the National Association of Secretaries of State and favored by Alexander, Lieberman, and Klobuchar is a series of regional primaries with the order of regions rotate every election cycle.
The Delaware Plan divides the states into groups with smallest states voting first and the largest states voting last. The smallest twelve states would be the first group. The smallest thirteen of the remaining states would be the second group, the next thirteen the third group, and the largest twelve states would form the final group. The final states as between them they control more than half of the delegates to the national conventions. The plan was originally proposed by the Republican National Committee in 2000, to take effect in the 2004 campaign.
The Graduated Random Presidential Primary System also know as the American Plan or the California Plan is a series of primaries during which randomly selected states hold their primaries, with a gradual increase in the population of states holding primaries. The schedule is weighted based on each state’s number of congressional districts. The first period would take place in a randomly selected group of states whose congressional districts total exactly eight. In the second period the eligibility number would increase to a total sixteen districts. The ordering of later rounds are: 24, 56, 32, 64, 40, 72, 48, 80.
Each plan has its flaws.
The Graduated Random Presidential Primary System’s flaw is obvious in its name: random. Which states are selected when will play a significant role in the campaign. Replacing New Hampshire with New Mexico for instance would change the whole election.
The Regional Primary System’s flaw is similar. Whichever region is rotated first in a cycle will influence the election. Moreover who is deciding how many regions exist and what they are.
Will it be a three part division: North, South, West.
Or four parts: Northeast, South, Middle West, West.
Or nine part: New England, Middle Atlantic, East North Central, West North Central, South Atlantic, East South Central, West South Central, Mountain, Pacific.
Or a different three part division: East, Central, West.
The Delaware System is by far the best of the three because there is an actual reason why certain states are grouped together in a particular order. It is not a random or rotating schedule. This is something both the current system and the other reform plans lack. However, its flaw lies in the fact it would be difficult for candidate without resources to run in all states especially in the first round as these small states are as widely spread as any in the nation.
So what other alternatives exist.
Combining the Delaware Plan with the Regional System where the small regions go first and the largest goes last eliminates the distance issue but revives the ‘What is a Region’ question.
The states could hold there primary in order of their population with Wyoming first and California last. Each state would get their very own 15 minutes of fame and the distance issue would be eliminated but it would necessitate a 50 week primary election and negate the influence of the largest states.
A national primary with a runoff election is an interesting option. Not a two round system like France where only the top two candidates go onto additional round but an elimination runoff. In each round the weakest candidate is eliminated until there is a majority. Say the Republicans have ten candidates and the Democrats have nine then the Republicans who start earlier and have nine rounds while the Democrats have only eight rounds. One by one the weakest candidates would be eliminated. This ensures there is enough time for the public to become familiar with the candidate while still having the entire country vote at the same time. It would require voters to make several trips to the ballot box however.
A single national primary day is undesirable because it gives the media too much influence in the election if single nontransferable votes are used. If a ranked ballot is used instead, either the Alternative Vote used in Australia (also known as the Hare vote or IRV) or a Condorset friendly method, I feel a single national primary is possible though maybe not desirable. Instead of choosing a single candidate voters would rank the candidates in order of their preference 1,2,3,… with allowance made for ties. However, this would require critical thinking skills on the part of voters.
Although the current primary system is defective, serious thought is going to be needed before a new method is chosen. No replacement is going to be perfect but some proposals are worse than others. We need to make certain the cure is not worse than the disease.
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the best proposal in the deleware one, but i would add the smallest states in terms of population are overwhelming rural farm based states which leaves us with the same problems of farmer being way too important in the electoral process.
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In my humble opinion, the current issue is how states are trying to jump to the front of the line rather than the actual states at the very front.
In fact, reflect for a moment because this is shocking: Iowa and New Hampshire both flipped between elections 2000 and 2004, from Gore->Bush and Bush->Kerry respectively. Accident or otherwise, this says to me that they are key bellweather states. These are great states to have at the front of the line…
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There’s a good analysis/comparison of the actual positive and negative effects of:
The American Plan
The Delaware Plan
The Rotating Regional Plan
at http://www.freewebs.com/primaryschemes
There’s some significant flaws hidden in those, that may not be obvious without detailed analysis.
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There are significant flaws with the American Plan, the Regional Plan, and the Delaware Plan. However, with a little tweaking, they can be fixed.
Check out this analysis at
… http://www.freewebs.com/primaryschemes/ …