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Close Down the Caucuses
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Issue
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| Contributor | Scott³ |
| Last Edited | Scott³ Mar 07, 2008 09:04am |
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| Category | Opinion |
| News Date | Thursday, March 6, 2008 03:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Opinion by Froma Harrop in the Providence Journal.
An excerpt...
"One can assume that the people brawling into the late hours of a weekday night are not representative of your broad electorate, even in Texas. Compare the orderly primary vote in Ohio — where the results were known by bedtime — to the weird "Texas Two-Step," which pasted a caucus onto a primary.
Actually, the primary part of the Texas process went smoothly. It was the caucus that led to the unseemly spectacle of pushing and shoving in overcrowded rooms. More worrisome, some caucus leaders apparently didn't understand all the caucus rules.
Down with caucuses. They are not only chaotic, they are undemocratic.
Some decades ago, Democrats decided they didn't want their presidential nominees picked in a smoked-filled room of old party dons. Open the windows, they said. Let the people decide. They even rejected winner-take-all state primaries, which award all the convention delegates to the candidate who scores a majority of votes. Candidates now receive convention delegates relative to their primary vote.
Proportional primaries and the caucus system have both worked against Hillary Clinton and for Barack Obama. Clinton consistently won the majority in the big-state primaries in California, New York and now Texas — but couldn't walk off with all the delegates. With his core of impassioned supporters, Obama has been able to dominate the caucuses.
But this isn't about what helps one candidate or another. It's about whether the Democrats will complete the journey to empowering a broad range of their voters.
In primaries, a voter can show up at the polls anytime between, say, 8 a.m. and 9 p.m., cast a secret ballot and go home or to work. Caucuses are run at a set hour. If you couldn't show up at an Iowa caucus precinct at 7 p.m. on Jan. 3 (a Thursday), you couldn't participate in the nation's first presidential contest." |
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