Monday, August 20, 2007

What in the world has any citizen of Missouri ever received of any benefit from the fact that Presidential candidates are chosen by the public in primary elections? There is so much wrong with this system that it takes a long time to enumerate them all.

1. A primary election with more than two candidates that results in a winner-take-all result is not fair to the electorate. This results in a state's delegates all going to a candidate that nowhere near a majority of the state's population supports. A primary winner should have to have greater than 50% of the vote to win.

2. Primary elections do not draw anywhere near a plurality of the electorate to the polls. This results in a very small slice of the population deciding where a states delegates cast their first ballot votes at the convention. The disadvantage of this is obvious if you watch the Republicans try to out-torture and out-christian each other to attract the troglodyte Republican primary voter.

3. Viable and desirable Presidential contenders are eliminated from consideration by issues other than their support by the electorate. Historically, a candidate could line up supporters in state delegations and the contest for candidate took place at the convention. Convention delegates were politically informed and vested in the political process. The current process decides the issue of the candidate by starving them of money.

4. Money plays too great a role these days in the Presidential primary, because the candidate is forced to buy expensive media time to reach all potential primary voters. If a study were done of the cost per vote in the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries it would show that much more is spent per actual vote cast than in any other election. The over-influence of money in the process forces the candidates to cultivate unhealthy (to the republic) connections to sources of funding that demand access for it.

5. Most state delegates to the political conventions have no purpose in the nominating process. Due to money starvation, all of the candidates but one have quit the attempt to get nominated before the convention. Only the voters of two or three states actually get any influence on the outcome. This has the effect of tilting the field even more toward the extremes of the political spectrums, causing the majority of the electorate to feel as though they have no real choice in the ensuing election.

Missouri citizens send delegates to the national conventions and hold a presidential primary. Why? What good does it do the Missouri Democratic Party or the state to support this failed process? I think that our time and money would be better spent on recreating the organization to build a strong relationship between the populations of our various neighborhoods and the state government.