Why we should scrap state primaries in the presidential race
The question on everyone’s lips these days seems to be: how do we stop Donald Trump’s push toward the nomination? It should be: is our current primary system the best way to choose a presidential candidate?
Over the past 225 years, America has changed how it selects its nominees many times. With the 2016 election season shaping up as one of the most chaotic in modern history, it’s time to cast off the last vestiges of our archaic nominating system and embrace more modern and egalitarian voting methods.
Despite another evening of primary and caucus victories on Tuesday night, no one really knows if Trump will make the threshold of 1,237 delegates necessary to tie up the nomination right away. If he doesn’t, it could lead to a contested convention, multiple rounds of delegate voting and a nomination for Ted Cruz, John Kasich or some party-backed candidate not even in the race such as Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan. To many Republicans, the rise of Trump is an indication that the party’s nominating process is broken.
But the Republicans aren’t the only ones with delegate woes. Many Democrats are up in arms over the party’s 30-year-old procedure of using so-called “superdelegates” to help pick the nominee, a system that seems designed – at least according to his supporters – to deny Bernie Sanders the nomination.
But these complicated systems, now viewed as problematic, are the direct result of our opaque system of electing a president, which goes all the way back to the constitutional convention.
cont'd
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/23/we-should-scrap-state-primaries-presidential-race