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?
10 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.
The push to open primaries came about because some parties dominate a given state, thereby effectively making non-majority party member votes irrelevant (whoever wins the nomination wins the office, so the non majority has no say).
Most states only allow you to vote in one primary and most people prefer to support their preferred candidate rather than sabotage the other party.
I suspect opinions would change sabotage became a thing.
In California the primary is more like a first round election and the general election more like a runoff. Would you consider that sensible?
@Jeffrey Shallit said, "It seems that in reality, you don't actually want to know the answer to the question."
My main question was, "What do they (you?) think is the purpose of primaries in the United States?" On the surface it seems like it's a way of choosing a party's candidate but I think many Americans see the system differently. I think they see it as a two-state electoral system where the first stage serves to narrow the field to a runoff of just two candidates. I think this is why independents feel they have a right to vote in the first phase.
You said that Americans don't feel like they're a "member" of a political party. You make it sound like it's just a convenient box to check when you go to vote. That's interesting because it doesn't seem that way to this outsider. It seems to me that about half of all voters in the USA are fiercely loyal to one of the parties and many Americans seem to self-identify as Republicans or Democrats. I didn't know that there is no official "membership" criteria. Thanks for that.
But I don't see why those loyal supporters would want outsiders to help choose their candidates. Is it possible for anyone to show up and vote in a Republican primary just by registering as a Republican on voting day? If so, then why are Independents like Smerconish suing the state to be allowed to vote? I
I think we may be moving closer to the US system, however, with systems that make it easier to join a party and vote in their leadership conventions. Poilievre become CPC leader not by persuading long-time Conservatives to support him, but by having a hugely successful membership drive that signed up a large number of people who were not dedicated CPC but just wanted a more extreme right winger to lead the country. For all the concerns about leaders being selected in the proverbial "smoke-filled rooms", it seems to me the old system produced a better quality of candidates.
My guess is that the reasoning might be: worse than having your own party losing, is having the most radical option of the opposing party winning, so the priority, for both parties and for those who reject them both, is trying to eliminate the worst outcome
If that is the case, it seems to be having the opposite effect. Trump is clearly the most radical and incompetent President ever elected, and it's happened twice.
Caucuses aren't primaries - caucuses are private events for people active in the party; in fact, primaries are a "reform" from the days where caucuses chose the candidates without consulting the voters.
Post a Comment