Democrats Consider Revamping Primaries....YESSSS!

[KoKo]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050515/ap_on_el_pr/primary_

Democrats Consider Revamping Primaries

By MIKE GLOVER, Associated Press Writer Sun May 15, 3:54 AM ET

CHICAGO - Democrats, looking to reverse their fortunes after two straight White House defeats, met Saturday to hear competing proposals to revamp the election calendar used to choose a presidential nominee every four years.
The three major proposals would focus on regional primaries. Two of those proposals would allow Iowa and New Hampshire to retain their leadoff roles in the candidate selection process.

A third plan, offered by Michigan Democrats, would create a rotating series of six regional primaries. A different region would launch each presidential nominating season.

-SNIP-

Activists from Iowa and New Hampshire vowed to fiercely defend their leadoff status, and said the problem the party faces is excessive "front-loading." In 2004, 30 states had held delegate selection contests by mid-March.

Former New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen argued that the crush of early states takes influence away from voters in later states.

"I think front-loading is one of the issues we want to address," said Shaheen.

:woohoo:

[NYCGirl]

1. BRAVO! Front-loading is a terrible idea. NT

[patricia92243]

2. Stupid question: Why don't we just have ALL states vote at one time? n/t

[Blue Belle]

3. No kidding...

I'm tired of having Iowa pick my candidate.

[dhinojosa]

8. Yeah, Iowa voted for Bush in the general election.

WTF.

[janx]

5. People object to that because "it's too expensive."

Not a stupid question. Many people have been in favor of doing just that.

[dhinojosa]

9. I thought each state's party pays for it.

hmm

[welshTerrier2]

14. bad idea ...

i wouldn't like this at all ...

first, the wealthiest candidates with the most name recognition would have a huge advantage ... by having a couple of primaries each week, lesser known candidates have a chance to be heard and make some progress ...

second, the drip, drip, drip of primaries that are spread out keeps Democrats in the news for months ...

third, spreading out the primaries gives voters a chance to watch the candidates deal with a much wider range of national events ... for example, if the bankruptcy bill was the hot issue on "primary day", it might play a disproportionate role in the primaries ... holding primaries over a longer timeframe puts issues in their proper perspective ...

changing the primary calendar to strengthen the Party and to provide a fairer process to voters is a great idea; holding them all on the same day probably is not ...

[Selatius]

15. Money-power already skews the primaries

That and control of the news media. For example, Dean may have had ferocious money-raising capability, but he was simply the victim of character assassination. How else could Dean have made himself heard inside an aircraft hangar with poor acoustics and a haphazard speaker system?

The best campaigns are consistent in content. Bush hammered the same message over and over again, first and foremost. While it is important to address important issues, it is a bad idea to bend and flex every which way according to the next news item coming up. What you get is a scatter-shot message, not a consistent one repeated over again. Rather, the news items should be co-opted to be used as an example highlighting the Democrat's policies in that subject matter. It shouldn't be where he is reacting to the news but instead being proactive.

The Iowa and New Hampshire primaries generally garner the most media attention. This is true, but even with the drip drip of primaries, you always get less coverage after the first wave of primaries.

Yes, I'm in favor of revamping the primary system. It is front-loaded.

[aldian159]

18. The front runner would dominate

The nomination would go to whomever has the most money and name recognition to get media buys, plain and simple.

[leyton]

20. Because then most candidates wouldn't have a chance.

Most candidates could probably not wage a fifty-state primary campaign. The most well-funded candidate would probably ride to the nomination.

[customerserviceguy]

4. I'd be in favor

of having multiple states, in various parts of the country, hold primaries at the very beginning of primary season. NH and IA are probably fine representatives of New England and the Midwest, but why not have states in the South, the Mountain West, the Pacific Coast, and the Atlantic Seaboard weigh in at the same time?

I really think we'd have had the better candidate of Howard Dean if either CA or NY had been able to have a primary in February 2004.

[Stinky The Clown]

6. **Almost** anything is better than the front loaded primaries, but

the notion of a single day national primary is not, in my opinion, a good one.

Lesser known candidates would not have a prayer of raising enough money to be competitive.

I would much rather see primaries on a regional basis. The regional affinity would allow what the candidates do in neighboring states to be applicable across the region to hold the primary.

For example: A Mid-Atlantic primary might involve MD, DE WV, VA, NC .... maybe even PA or OH.

A candidate's actions and events in, say, Richmond would be covered regionally. For the less well heeled candidate, this allows them to amplify their voice to the whole region.

I have done no study whatever of what the regions might look like, but they should be relatively balanced in terms of their total Electoral College weight.

I'd suggest we have as many regions as is reasonable. Say, Northeast (New England, NY, NJ), Mid Atlantic (PA, DE, ND, WV, VA, NC), Southeast (SC, GA, FL, TN, AL, MS), South Central (TX, LA, AR, OK, MO) North Central (OH, KY, IN, MI, IL, WI) Plains (KS, IA, MN, ND, SD, CO, WY, MT), Northwest (UT, ID, WA, OR - and maybe AK and HI)), Southwest (CA, NV, AZ, NM). As I said, I have not studied this, but it seems a good enough starting point to work as an example in this post.

The idea is that no one candidate can lock up too early, all candidates can amplify their voice by the regional affinity effect, and when appropriate, some real momentum can be built.

As to Iowa and New Hampshire, they can both be in the first regions to go. And maybe the Iowa caucuses could be the night before its region and New Hampshire can keep its traditional midnight polling ... more symbolism than substance .... but.

Anyway ... this is what I'd like to see.

I'd also like to see 100%, unequivocal publicly funded campaigns, but that's for another thread .......

[GreenPartyVoter]

7. Did they mention anything about instant runnof voting ballots?

[ticapnews]

10. My proposal

I would propose the nation be divided into regions like this:

Northeast (8)
Maine
New Hampshire
Vermont
Massachusetts
Connecticut
Rhode Island
New York
Pennsylvania

Mid-Atlantic (8)
New Jersey
Maryland
Delaware
DC
West Virginia
Virginia
North Carolina
South Carolina

South (9)
Florida
Georgia
Alabama
Mississippi
Louisiana
Arkansas
Texas
Oklahoma
Tennessee

Midwest (8)
Iowa
Illinois
Indiana
Kentucky
Ohio
Michigan
Minnesota
Wisconsin

Plains (9)
Missouri
Kansas
Nebraska
North Dakota
South Dakota
Montana
Wyoming
Colorado
Utah

West (9)
Washington
Oregon
Idaho
California
Nevada
Arizona
New Mexico
Alaska
Hawaii

The primary season kicks off the week of January 6, 2008. To pacify IA and NH, we let them go first on Monday and Tuesday respectively. Maryland, New Mexico, Arkansas and Kansas would hold their primary or caucus later in the week.

On January 27 the second round kicks off with events in Maine, West Virginia, Arizona, Wisconsin, Oklahoma and Montana.

February 10 would be Oregon, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Michigan, Alabama and North Dakota.

Two weeks later Washington, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Missouri hold their primaries.

March 11 is Super Tuesday. The largest states in each region have their primaries with 1/3 of all the delegates up for grabs: California, New York, New Jersey, Texas, Illinois and Missouri. After Super Tuesday 73% of the delegates will be awarded so it is possible, though unlikely, we'd have a winner.

Three regions (Plains, South, West) have extra states. They will hold an extra primary on the week of March 23. These states would be Nevada, Louisiana and Nebraska.

April 6 would be the next big round of primaries, with elections in Idaho, Rhode Island, DC, Minnesota, Georgia and Colorado. At this point, 84% of the delegates have been assigned.

On April 20 the next-to-last primaries take place in Utah, Florida, Kentucky, Delaware, Vermont and Hawaii.

Going into the final week of primary contest on May 11, 93% of the delegates have been awarded and it is likely that we have a nominee. However if no one has wrapped up 50% of the votes, Wyoming, Mississippi, Indiana, Virginia, Connecticut and Alaska would decide the nomination.

A few notes: The delegate counts are calculated from the base delegate counts from 2004 and do not include Super-Delegates.

This plan eliminates the front-loading issue: After the first two primary weeks, less than 14% of the delegates have been awarded; fewer than 25% after week three and only 40% prior to Super Tuesday. The nomination would not be wrapped up until at least April, giving people plenty of time to vet the candidates.

The biggest benefit of this plan would be the diversity introduced in the earliest stages of the primary season. More than just the ethnic diversity of including large numbers of Hispanics and Blacks, we would have regional diversity. We would be including good portions of the South and Midwest in the early stages of the process.

The states have been set where they are on the calendar to allow a certain percentage of the delegates to be awarded in each round. This prevents the front-loading, but also ensures that the early states carry some weight. Some of them can be moved pretty easily if necessary.

[Stinky The Clown]

11. That's a good plan .... but how do we address the issue of less

well known candidates? These are people with little name recognition and likely little money (until they get some momentum - if they ever do). In my scenario, post 6, above, I was banking on the natural affinity across a region whereby whatever a candidate does or says in the region would get amplified across the whole region by the **local* news outlets (hopefully less filtered than the national disgrace ... er ... media). Ad buys would likely be more economical as well, since 'local' media often crosses jurisdictional lines. Indeed, in some areas, the 'local' media may well be in the next state!

I DO however, like your idea that the primaries hop around the country, keeping each region (if not each state within that region) involved till late in the process.

I just don't want to cause any extra financial burden for the 'little guys' in the early going.

[XemaSab]

22. Yeah, but a candidate with less money

could focus on just a few states for the first round. each candidate could take more of a regional approach, so in the last primary (for example) dean and kerry would have fought for the northeast and far west, gephardt and kucinich could have focused on the midwest, and clark and edwards could have focused on the south.

If a candidate wins no states and doesn't even make strong showings in the first round, they can drop out, but it's not like an Iowan "all the eggs in one basket" approach where placing fourth in Iowa is certain doom.

If a candidate totally sweeps the first round, then it's likely they'll be the nominee, but it's possible for the second round of states to take a sobering look at the people who placed well in the first round and really decide who they want as president. New Hampshire came very closely on the heels of "the scream," and people I talked to in NH said they were going to vote for Dean until that happened. There was no time for the media to really shut up about it.

[wyldwolf]

12. What's going to happen in 2008...

...when the candidate of someone's choice STILL doesn't win the nomination?

[KoKo]

13. Many of us are still working on getting machines with Verifiable Paper

Ballot which can be audited in place in our states before 2006. We are working hard but coming against alot of resistence. Still we are out there. NC has two bills coming up in our State House and Senate in the next month. Other states hopefully have the "ground troops" trying to push through legislation to get the DRE's out.

[wyldwolf]

16. I understand that and applaud the effort

But... we're speaking of the primary process.

And specifically, the fact that some blame that process for their candidate not fairing well or not winning the Dem nomination.

So again I ask, say the primary process is "fixed" to everyone's satisfaction and someone's guy STILL doesn't win.

Can we then say with certainty that the voters spoke? Or will we then blame the media, the other candidates, etc.?

[KoKo]

19. Given these crazy times....how can we speculate with any hope of being

correct. I don't know. :shrug: We are doing the best we can. I can't give up all hope and go out in the back yard and slit my wrists over it.

[NVMojo]

17. GOOD!!!!

[gristy]

21. Use Instant Runoff Voting in the dem primaries

That would give us the strongest candidate every time.

[Clarkie1]

23. Start with the competitive states and regions from 04'

Ohio, the southwest, "purple" southern states, Florida...

That would seem the most logical to me from a stategic standpoint.

Edit:

Plan B: Or, get real aggressive and start in the "deep red" states.