If you could totally revamp the way this country does primaries, how would you do it?

1/17/2012 12:00:44 AM

Fight to the death. Last man standing in the room picks the candidate who will receive all electoral votes.

1/17/2012 12:03:00 AM

Rhode Island holds their primary first. It is held in the basement of a single Baptist church. The first 40 people in line get to vote. Winner takes all delegates. All other states in the nation accept the results and praise the new candidate during the national convention the following day.

1/17/2012 12:20:58 AM

The nominees are placed in a rodeo circle and a lone cow is introduced into the arena. The candidate nearest the cow when it first defecates wins. Winner takes all delegates. All other states in the nation accept the results and praise the new candidate during the national convention the following day.

1/17/2012 12:22:50 AM

Three states in no way representative of the country as a whole hold their primary months before the rest of the nation. Despite defying the rules and losing some delegates, no one cares or even pays much attention to the results because the correct candidate was actually chosen years prior by the corporate owners. The news and propaganda departments of the several aforementioned corporations ensure the public accepts this choice.

1/17/2012 12:28:51 AM

Anyone smart enough to envisage a fair and representative primary process is too smart to participate in party politics.

[Edited on January 17, 2012 at 12:42 AM. Reason : But not me. I'm a registered republican. Why do you hate America, bbhe?]

1/17/2012 12:36:11 AM

I agree with smc.

1/17/2012 1:14:37 AM

Masterbated enough?

1/17/2012 2:15:26 AM

That's a toughie. The thing that might do the most good with the least disruption to the system would be for more of the early states to lump together and have their primaries on the same day. Right now we've got a string of mostly individual primaries/caucuses, then Super Tuesday, then a few more, right? If it were four or five lumps of ~10 states on each day, it would force the candidates to spread out more and prevent results from a couple of states that aren't representative of the whole country from having too much sway.

But on the other hand, the current system can level the playing field for candidates who have less money. Huntsman was never going to compete with Romney in terms of fundraising before Iowa and New Hampshire, but with a little more name recognition the decision to put all his efforts into NH might have paid off with a win. And that could have helped balance out the fundraising disparities.

On yet another hand, as things are NH is a sane primary wedged in between two Jesus primaries, so maybe it doesn't do much good. Look at John McCain in 2000.

We might as well play Vishnu here and grow a bunch of other hands, because the next counterpoint is that a lot of state primaries very rarely matter, which doesn't seem like a good thing. How often are there still multiple candidates by the time NC's primary rolls around?

But then it's the same thing with the electoral college. Wyoming doesn't matter in the general, and they vote on the same day as everyone else.

I dunno, my head hurts thinking about it. Really the system would be OK if people weren't dumb as hell. Maybe the smart play is to make people be less dumb.

1/17/2012 3:54:05 AM

Eh, individual votes in Wyoming are 15 times as powerful as individual votes in California.

1/17/2012 8:33:34 AM

Everyone votes at once.

List preferred candidates in order. List can be as long as desired.

use math.

done.

1/17/2012 8:53:15 AM

Quote :

"I dunno, my head hurts thinking about it. Really the system would be OK if people weren't dumb as hell. Maybe the smart play is to make people be less dumb."

That's right. Only problem is that making people smart is way more complicated than pumping money into public schools, or whatever policy recommendations are usually made. There is a cultural aspect driving idiocy that is difficult to tweak. That's why I reserve very little optimism for many parts of America and even the world.

1/17/2012 10:54:04 AM

potato sack race

1/17/2012 11:20:59 AM

Candidates would take an extensive series of tests and trials that prove what they would do in all situations based on extremely well designed simulations.

Each candidate attempting to become president would have results published and linked to individual voters examinations.

Voters will have a very detailed list of positives and negatives of each candidate to fully inform them who to vote for.

Massive popular vote all at once. Most votes = winner.

1/17/2012 4:37:00 PM

Congratulations, you just invented the Kobayashi Maru.

1/18/2012 7:58:58 PM

1/18/2012 8:11:48 PM