In my last column, I expressed my negative opinion of the movement to do an end run around the Electoral College - part of our constitutionally mandated system of government - by signing states onto a legally and constitutionally questionable compact to give all their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.
This would inevitably lead to a situation in which the more populous - and politically liberal - states of the East and West coasts would dominate every election.
That is not to say, however, that there are not ways in which our current electoral system could be improved. Consider, for example, the primary system. No offense to Iowa and New Hampshire, but the critics that suggest they are hardly representative of America as a whole have a point, as do those who point out that they exert an influence over the process that is completely at odds with their population.
And as the primary season becomes front-loaded, with more and more states moving their primaries earlier to compete for influence with Iowa and New Hampshire, those states that don't are at a disadvantage. I can't remember the last time I actually had a role, no matter how small, in selecting my party's candidate for president, because by the time Maryland's primary comes around, the candidate has usually been decided. This is disappointing, and it can become demoralizing and lead to disinterest in the whole process.
One solution to this problem would be to have a single, national, primary. As a 2008 essay in Forbes magazine put it, "The idea would be to have a national primary day - the type of balloting to be decided by each state (caucus, primary balloting, town hall, for that matter) that is best suited to its citizens and their traditions." Any run-offs required could be held on a later, again fixed, date.
The advantages to this are obvious. More voters would have a chance to participate in the process, and all states would have the opportunity to be involved in the selection of presidential nominees. However, as Beth Chapman, of U.S. News, points out, a national primary day would also present several significant problems.
First, this would hand a huge advantage to larger, better-funded campaigns by well-known figures. Less-known and less well-funded challengers would have trouble mounting a credible challenge across a national arena. That said, as Forbes points out, "such candidates could target their spending on a few individual states and hope to win some delegates to take to the national conventions. In that case, the conventions might even prove meaningful again."
Second, the focus of attention would be directed on the larger and more populous states with higher delegate counts, which would have an advantage not unlike the one I decried in opposing a national popular vote.
One possible alternative, advocated by Chapman, and by the National Association of Secretaries of State, is a rotating regional primary system in which the nation would be divided into four regions that would take turns voting first, and staggering the voting over a period of four months. In theory, this would result in a more logical, orderly and fair process that gives every state and its voters a real opportunity to play a role in the selection of the presidential nominees with results that are representative of the whole country.
The reality is that there is probably no system which is perfect. All have their pros and cons. But that does not mean we should not look carefully at how we might be able to improve the current system so that it serves the needs of all Americans without unduly privileging any.
