The Nomination Problem

This week, I’m taking a brief break from international trade.? Dealing with international trade issues for more than 40 years, I’ve had extensive experience with political activity.? International trade provides plenty of opportunity for political sport, and as a result trade practitioners know politics.

The state of American presidential politics is particularly bad right now.? The nominating system for choosing candidates for President is, in very large measure, to blame for this.? In short, the nomination system is broken.? Many if not most voters agree that both major party candidates are not “the best and the brightest.”?

Recent decades have seen massive changes in how presidential candidates are chosen.? Not too long ago, the nominating process saw a mix of primary elections in a few states and state conventions in others.? Those contests chose delegates to the national conventions where the nomination was decided.? Party leaders had a major role in assembling majorities of those delegates to choose the nominee—the “smoke-filled room.”?

Beginning with the riotous Democratic convention of 1968, the system changed, with state primary elections (and caucuses) predominating.? In 2024, almost every state has a primary selecting all or most convention delegates.? Most primaries are “closed,” meaning that only registered Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary and only registered Republicans can vote in the Republican primary.? The zealots in both parties hold disproportionate sway in the selection.?

National political conventions are now strictly theater, with no real doubts about who the nominee will be.? This summer in Chicago and Milwaukee, the nominees will almost surely be Joe Biden and Donald Trump, respectively.?

How did we get here, and, more importantly, how do we escape??

We got here by changing too fast and with inadequate attention to the forces being set loose.? Conventions are now an American version of royal coronations.? But the British do this only rarely, only four times in the 20th?Century, while we put on the same show every four years.? The ultimate concession to show business may have been the 2020 Republican convention, where the party did not even bother to approve a party platform.

The convention delegates are generally pledged for the first ballot to the candidate that won the primary in their state.? Since 1980, zero nomination fights went past the first ballot.? Foregone conclusion.? Is it any wonder that candidates outside politics don’t play this game?? Whatever happened to folks like Abraham Lincoln, or Wendell Willkie?? No more.

We rely on primaries too much.? That may appear anti-democratic to say, but it’s not.?

The most egregious weakness of the primary system is the “closed” primary, in which registered voters of one party vote for one of two candidates on the November ballot.? The electorate is restricted to registered members of a single political party, disproportionately the extreme wing of the party.? Party activists hold the key to the nomination.? But in November, the extremists will not be so powerful, because everybody can vote then.? But by then the choice will only be “binary.”? One of two candidates selected by only a minority of voters will be elected.? While binary election choices constantly generate complaints about “the lesser of two evils,” that is a much more valid complaint these days.

Political parties prefer closed primaries because they appear to enhance the clout of parties.? You have to register as a Republican to vote in a Republican primary election.? It’s certainly not a perfect system.? Changing voter registration is easy in almost all states, so there is no guarantee that “mischief” won’t happen when “real” Democrats register as Republicans to vote for the weakest candidate in November.? Indeed, that happens a lot.

The “winner take all” system of allocating delegates is another weakness in the system, at least in my view.? In each state or each congressional district within a state, “winner take all” means that the first place finisher gets all the delegates in that particular jurisdiction.? In a crowded field of candidates, that means the winner could get 1/3 or even less of the popular vote but walk away with all the delegates from that state.? In 2016 Donald Trump won the nomination in exactly that way, by finishing first but not getting a majority of votes.?

Democrats don’t do “winner take all,” but the system is also weighted toward the top vote getters.? No candidate getting less than 15 percent of the popular vote is awarded delegates.? The candidates exceeding that threshold split 100 percent of the available delegates.? The top finishers divide the spoils, rounding up large numbers out of proportion to the number of votes they actually received.

What to do?? States have considerable power to change the system, but only a few have done so.? Most states now have primaries, and a few have “open” primaries, where anyone can vote.? Primaries can also be “semi-open” (permitting independents to vote) or “closed” (where only registered party members may vote).? In many states, independents amount to half or even more of the voters.?

This brings me to a possible fix.? There are credible arguments that closed primary elections violate the U.S. Constitution, especially in states where the primary election is, in fact, the election that matters.? States like Idaho, Texas, New York, Illinois, and Maryland come to mind.? A closed primary in those states (and in numerous congressional districts) in reality chooses the next holder of the office, without the benefit of independent voters.?

I would favor a system where each state would conduct a primary election open to all voters.? A political party could choose an open primary, in which all voters were eligible, or a “semi-closed” primary, in which unaffiliated voters could choose which primary to vote in.? The extreme voters would form a smaller part of the electorate in each system.? If a party insists on selecting candidates in a close primary, that state could reject the request.? Sounds fair to me.?

There are additional reforms that have been suggested to encourage more suitable candidates to run, not only for President but for other offices as well.? More ideas would be welcome.?

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