I'm a Canadian who's always been puzzled about American primaries. It seems to me that the purpose of these primaries is to help a political party choose its candidates for the next election. It seems like two of the parties, the Republican party and the Democratic Party, have managed to get state governments to fund their primary elections for reasons that are not very clear to those of us who live in other countries.
Today I was watching Michael Smerconish on CNN. He always has a poll question that provides a deep (and troubling) insight into his way of thinking. Today he announced that he is part of a class action lawsuit demanding that independent voters be allowed to vote in primary elections. That sounds weird to me because I'm used to a system where only members of a party get to choose who their candidates will be.
I was aware of the fact that many Americans see this differently and I knew that some states allow non-party members to pick the party candidate. Nevertheless, I was curious to see how CNN listeners would respond to his poll question.
Here are the results.
I find that result astonishing. 86% of respondents think they should be able to choose the candidate of the Republican or Democrat party even if they don't belong to one of those parties? What do they (you?) think is the purpose of primaries in the United States?
Here's a list of states and who they allow to vote in one of the primaries. It seems like the states actually have laws governing how political parties are able to choose their candidates.
I don't know of any other democracy that has such a bizarre system. I'm a member of one of the political parties in Canada and I participated in selecting our party leader. I would be outraged if my government passed a law allowing members of another party (or nonmembers) to help select my party leader or candidate. Why are such laws acceptable in the United States?
3 comments :
Because there is no analogous notion of being a "member" of a party in the US. You don't have a membership card, you don't pay dues, there is no official national membership roll. If you want to be a Democrat, you just register as a Democratic voter when you register to vote. And it also differs state-by-state.
@Jeffrey Shallit: What has that got to do with primaries? Democrats and Republicans were able to pick candidates for many years before primaries became popular. Could anybody go to a convention just by declaring that they belonged to a party?
And how does that work in Iowa? Can you just show up at a caucus and declare that you are a Democrat? I can't imagine that a bunch of people wearing red hats would be welcome! :-)
It seems that in reality, you don't actually want to know the answer to the question. You asked why it is the case, not how did it become that way historically. And I already said the rules differ state by state. For Iowa you could still register as a Democrat on site, to the best of my knowledge.
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