Reform presidential primaries
There are no comments for this page [ Add Comment ]Sunday, March 23, 2008
Utah Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert has a common-sense idea for making the nation's political primary and caucus system fairer -- which means it's probably doomed. But it's alive for now and, who knows, a miracle could happen.
Herbert and lots of his colleagues from other states are in agreement with most Americans: The system as it stands is a joke. States -- including Utah -- have been leap-frogging each other, setting earlier and earlier election dates, in the process, front-loading the nominating process. On the GOP side, Sen. John McCain had to endure less than two months of voting, and voter vetting, before becoming his party's presumptive nominee. On the Democratic side, it's been a nailbiter, but few people expect this scenario to be repeated again; for Democrats, this has been an unusual year due to the particular candidates running.
Herbert and his allies in the National Lieutenant Governors Association have endorsed -- unanimously -- a proposal that would institute a series of regional presidential primaries, grouping states in the West, Midwest, East and South. Every 16 years, one region would lead off with its primaries or caucuses in March. Then the next region would follow a month later, with voting culminating in June. Iowa and New Hampshire, of course, refuse to play along and insist on retaining the first caucus and primary, respectively, before the regional voting begins; it remains to be seen whether that will be a deal-breaker for some states.
Because this year's voting has been the earliest on record, there may be an appetite for change. Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, told Stateline.org: "The current process is nuts, absolutely nuts."
And he's not the only political leader hoping for reform. In any event, if it doesn't get decided at the GOP and Democratic national conventions this year, it'll take another four years to get it back on the agenda -- the parties only have national conventions every four years when nominating presidential candidates -- and by 2012, some states might be caucusing or holding primaries in November or December 2011.
That would be silly, of course, but it is not outside the realm of possibility.
We like the idea of regional, rotating primaries. We'd like to see Iowa and New Hampshire gathered back into the pack, too, but understand those states will likely never give up their traditional lead-off positions. Even so, this idea has merit and seems the fairest way to approach what has become a messy system.
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