Primary Concerns

By January 31, 2012, one-tenth of the nation’s primary votes in the Presidential nomination will have been cast. The largest of the anticipated swing states, Florida, has now advanced its primary to that date, sacrificing delegates at the convention in exchange for greater influence in the overall nominating process. It ought to go without saying that a party’s nomination process being advanced earlier and earlier is a ridiculous and counter-productive arms race. The general election is still more than a year away, and there are concerns that a promising candidate is already too late to effectively throw his hat into the ring.

People for some reason don’t like the idea of a national primary. People who do not live in Iowa or New Hampshire do not like the grossly misproprotioned influence those states have on the nomination process. There is also a concern that too many primaries all at once — or too many primaries too early — effectively excludes candidates who might have good ideas but haven’t yet assembled enough fundraising or campaign infrastructure to compete, but who might be able to do so if they can establish momentum early on.

I actually dismiss that last concern — a candidate who cannot raise substantial money and who cannot organize a national campaign is not going to be an effective nominee nor, if elected, an effective President; the primary process ought to weed out those candidates who are not effective administrators and organizers that way. If a candidate has good ideas and charisma but little ability to raise money or organize, then that person would probably make a good running mate or Cabinet appointment, but the top-of-the-ticket nominee must demonstrate good skills as an executive. Well, that’s my opinion, anyway.

So here’s another idea just to throw out there: assign primary dates by lot, five per week, in a structured ten-week season.

The first Tuesday in February of a Presidential election year, each state will send representatives to a Primary Lottery. There, each state will be assigned, at random, a one-week period running from Tuesday to the next Monday, in which to hold its primary in whatever fashion and on whatever date within that week-long period it deems appropriate. There would be five primaries per week, over the course of a ten-week period. The first week would begin with the last Tuesday in March of that year. This should result in the primaries ending at the beginning of June.

Now, to implement this would require some combination of a compact of states and strict rules changes by the national parties. The Feds couldn’t impose this on the states. It would take a lot of persuasion for Iowa and New Hampshire to step away from their current status of greater influence to be part of this system. My idea would require that a candidate organize in all fifty states and do fundraising, but I suspect that given that the order of states would not be known in advance, greater emphasis would fall on organization than money. At the same time, there would still be a minimum threshold of fundraising ability necessary to be competitive. The candidates would have to come up with platforms that could adapt nimbly to the resulting schedules — which would mean they would have to take on national sorts of concerns instead of parochial ones like ethanol subsidies.

At the same time, a “smaller” candidate wouldn’t have to confront the staggering complexity of a national primary or even a regional one; five states at a time would avoid the chaos of a “super Tuesday” but allow for meaningful and steady progress through the primary season as an administative, executive skills challenge for the candidate and campaign. A ten-week primary would be lengthy enough to allow for deliberation by voters but not so drawn out and so early in the process as to render itself nearly useless for the general election.

And, citizens of any state would have more or less equal chances at exercising the influence of an early vote, so we could dispense with the silliness of picking delegates to nominating conventions a year or more before those conventions take place — which is the direction things are headed right now.