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National Presidential Primary: You fer or agin it?

Elefantman

Elefantman

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Pennsylvania will have their presidential primary in late April and by that time the winners will already be declared by all the states that voted before us. My question is, how do you feel about a one day national primary? I have been reading articles explaining the pros and cons. The biggest con appears to be that only big money, established candidates could fund a one day primary while the prolonged primary season allows an unknown to gain early support and recognition. By the time the circus rolls into Philly, I'll be left with couple of clowns left standing. Looks like Shorty Price gets my vote again.
 
Tidewater

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Elefantman said:
Pennsylvania will have their presidential primary in late April and by that time the winners will already be declared by all the states that voted before us. My question is, how do you feel about a one day national primary? I have been reading articles explaining the pros and cons. The biggest con appears to be that only big money, established candidates could fund a one day primary while the prolonged primary season allows an unknown to gain early support and recognition. By the time the circus rolls into Philly, I'll be left with couple of clowns left standing. Looks like Shorty Price gets my vote again.
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The bad side (I guess) the small states would never see a candidate.
Plus side, all the obnoxious "insult your intelligence" advertising would be over in one fell swoop.
 
Elefantman

Elefantman

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There's definitely an appeal to get it over with quickly with a one day primary. Also I can have the illusion that my vote counts like the illusion I have the winning lottery ticket in my pocket.
 
81usaf92

81usaf92

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The problem really is that the first 5 elections are to gain endorsements and to shape who will win. So if you do it all in one day you could potentially have trump the winner without people trying to turn the momentum away from him
 
Tide1986

Tide1986

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Looks like voting/caucusing occurs on 27 different days beginning in February and ending in May.

Instead of having one big day, we could use a hybrid approach. For example, divide the delegate counts evenly across 10 or so selection days over the same February-May period (i.e. two to three selection days per month), which would generally make each selection day meaningful. You could even weight the last selection day a little more than the other individual days.
 
Tide1986

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Adding to my previous post...to help the smaller states with respect to relevance, you could group them together instead of grouping them with any of the large delegate count states.
 
Al A Bama

Al A Bama

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Why should small insignificant states determine who's going to drop out? So, the larger states only get to choose from the left-overs! So, I guess I'd be for it and less money would be wasted.
 
81usaf92

81usaf92

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Al A Bama said:
Why should small insignificant states determine who's going to drop out? So, the larger states only get to choose from the left-overs! So, I guess I'd be for it and less money would be wasted.
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I think the theory is it has small delegates at stake so it doesn't kill campaigns that still have realistic shots
 
selmaborntidefan

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This has been debated forever. So let met just hit some of the high point arguments and be a politician myself without taking a position.

1) No elected President - who prospered in the system of the year he was elected - has ANY incentive to change it. (This ought to be obvious to anyone).

2) A national primary is a terrible idea because it may well result in a nominee who has not been properly vetted and THEN a scandal is discovered from years ago - and the whole party and nominee are toast. In fact, a national primary guarantees that the guy with the most money WILL win (pretty much).

3) One proposal made by Walter Mondale some forty years ago would give us a regional primary. And guess what two things would happen? First, the person from that region would, in all probability, win the region, it would be like the Heisman voting. Secondly, the candidates would focus on the largest delegate prize exclusively. If Washington, Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Idaho, and California all have primaries the same day and all split proportionately......guess where the pols will maximize their efforts?

4) Of course then there's an obvious counter-argument.......the small states don't get any attention anyway with two notable exceptions, Iowa and New Hampshire. (Quick - name me one person who won the Idaho DEMOCRATIC caucus? You can't without looking, can you?).

(I'm at work - to be continued later....)
 
Bama Reb

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Tidewater said:
The bad side (I guess) the small states would never see a candidate.
Plus side, all the obnoxious "insult your intelligence" advertising would be over in one fell swoop.
Click to expand...
Alabama was a 'flyover state' when, in previous elections, our primaries were in late April. Now that we've changed it to early March we are once again among the relevant states. I agree that a national primary would once again make not only Alabama, but a bunch of other states once again, irrelevant.
That makes a lot of voters just stay home because they feel their vote doesn't really count.
No thanks.
 
M

mittman

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agin' it.

This year being a prime example. All of the other pros and cons aside, a national primary would require some form of consensus. With so many candidates, either it would force runoffs until one candidate gets an acceptable percentage or the party conventions would be zoos like we have never seen.
 
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