Couldn’t There Be a Better Way?
Kevin Holsapple
Posted: 05.04.2008 / 7:31 AM EDT
There is room for improvement in how we go about choosing our political leaders. The selection of Presidential candidates provides what is, to me, an obvious case in point. IT IS DRAGGING ON! Substantive discussion of the issues that matter seems to have been set aside long ago in favor of trivia and gotchas. The candidates look tired and worn out. I have not come across anyone in our community, where quite some time has passed since the primary, who is enthusiatic or excited about the continuing low-grade drama.
Congressional Quarterly reported recently on a Republican party discussion about reforming their primary process to, “… seek to create a more orderly presidential nomination process that involves more voters, discourages advertising-heavy campaigns in big states, and promotes one-on-one retail campaigning in which candidates personally interact with voters.” Sounds like good things to be thinking about.
I don’t know if the Democrats are also considering changes, but I hope so. Things that I have heard mentioned that I think would be improvements: get it done with in a couple or three months, limit it to four or five primary/caucus days, and use a random process to select the order in which blocks of states vote. Also, we ought to be able to figure out a way for the candidates to go on record about their position on important issues in some kind of standardized format that would allow for simpler comparison. Require that debates spend a healthy proportion of the allotted time on elucidating positions on these issues.
Another troubling aspect is that the popular vote may not matter. I guess that is the same situation for the general election, though. If the popular vote doesn’t matter, what are we going through all this for? Just put the super-delegates in a room and save lots of money.
An internet search will turn up many references to candidate selection reform. One reference that I thought lays out the issues and some ideas for reform is a 2001 report by the University Of Virginia’s Center for Governmental Studies.
