Iowa as First-in-the-Nation

[Antilogic]

So, read the links from the Ron Paul thread and saw this in the letter from Craig Robinson to the Iowa GOP chairs:

The Washington Post has published an article that says one of Iowa’s Republican Electors is considering voting for Ron Paul should Romney win this November. As I’m sure you are all aware, getting to the necessary 270 electoral votes is difficult for any Republican candidate, but is especially so this year with the 12 battleground states. Can someone explain to me how on earth someone like Melinda Wadsley was elected to be an elector when she refuses to support our nominee?

This behavior is getting really old. This behavior also puts Iowa’s First-in-the-Nation status at risk because it bolsters the arguments of those who would like to elect presidents by a national popular vote. The national popular vote proposal is something that you rightfully oppose, yet the actions of a select few in our state may help create the environment where it comes to pass.

This is very similar to the rules fight at the Republican National Convention. On one hand, Iowa Republicans do everything they can to defend Iowa’s preferred status, but on the other hand, they conduct themselves in a way that allows Iowa’s opponents to make rational arguments for changes to the nominating system.

If you truly care about maintaining Iowa’s First-in-the-Nation status, you will remind Ms. Wadsley that the primary is over. Like it or not, Mitt Romney is our nominee, and her role as an elector is to represent Iowa Republicans, not her own self-interest.

Bolded parts are my emphasis, and made my blood boil.

So is it inherently democratic to always have the state of Iowa go first? Should the order shuffle? Why does this particular, relatively-small and mostly rural state with 6 EVs go first? Why do they choose to have a caucus system over a popular-vote primary when going first? Seems like they should at least let all people state-wide vote for the candidates to give them the first boost out the gate.

EDIT: Forgot to put in my list of tags. Oh well, maybe next time.

 

[GhostWriter16]

I don't care about Iowa's position as first much one way or another. I tend to agree with you that a shuffle would be "More fair" but I think its pretty meaningless in this case. I honestly am not sure why it matters.

Melinda Wadsley deserves a medal of honor though. After the way the RNC changed the rules suddenly to not count the Paul votes, they have no right to complain. That she was so bold is absolutely praiseworthy. That the GOP is condemning and trying to shut out Ron Paul's supporters shows that they are no longer worth much.

 

[Antilogic]

Winning in the Iowa Caucus can give candidates a much-needed infusion of fund-raising. By always putting Iowa first, we are giving an artificial advantage to candidates who perform well in this particular Midwestern state. Even if it doesn't necessarily favor one party or the other, I think it emphasizes rural-friendly policies as opposed to city-friendly policies.

I would propose a system where first primary rotated within regions. So one state in New England would go first in 2016, then one state in the Deep South would go first in 2020, then one of the West Coast states would go first in 2024, etc. The second and third primaries would have to come from different regions (like this year, the Republicans went from Iowa to New Hampshire and then to the South). Afterwards, you'd have the Super-Tuesday primary fairly close behind the opening primaries. I'd even arrange the first primaries to take place at earliest in March, preferably later, and then Super-Tuesday happening in April. Campaign season is too long already.

 

[GhostWriter16]

Winning in the Iowa Caucus can give candidates a much-needed infusion of fund-raising. By always putting Iowa first, we are giving an artificial advantage to candidates who perform well in this particular Midwestern state. Even if it doesn't necessarily favor one party or the other, I think it emphasizes rural-friendly policies as opposed to city-friendly policies.

I would propose a system where first primary rotated within regions. So one state in New England would go first in 2016, then one state in the Deep South would go first in 2020, then one of the West Coast states would go first in 2024, etc. The second and third primaries would have to come from different regions (like this year, the Republicans went from Iowa to New Hampshire and then to the South). Afterwards, you'd have the Super-Tuesday primary fairly close behind the opening primaries. I'd even arrange the first primaries to take place at earliest in March, preferably later, and then Super-Tuesday happening in April. Campaign season is too long already.

The thing is though, if it were to rotate every time as you describe, in some election years a Democrat would almost certainly do well and thus get a lot of funding, while in other years, a Republican would be certain to do well.

I'd say that, while rotating regions, it should also have to be a swing state. So right now, Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, and a swing state in the west if there is one (New Mexico? Perhaps close enough...)

 

[cybrxkhan]

Who determines when the primary rotated? People will still be complaining that so and so region gets preference over another one.


Ideally, though, I do think that some sort of shuffling is the best option.

 

[downtown]

Iowa shouldn't be first, and New Hampshire shouldn't be second. They are in no way demographically similar to the rest of the country....it makes old rural white people even more overrepresented.

Ohio, Colorado, Georgia. That should be your top 3.

 

[Earthling]

I'm actually all right with political parties doing their primary systems however they want; you still have oddities like states being weighted not really according to just population but their results for the party in past elections, the difference between a primary and a caucus, and superdelegates. Having Iowa go first doesn't make a lot of sense, true, but change is slow.

If anything it would be all right for political parties to have their own primaries through their own efforts, mostly independent of government/state law. That doesn't really change or interfere with third party ballot access in the US, taxpayer money could sometimes be saved, and it's more like that in many other Western countries too.

The Electoral College for the actual Presidential election is of course a mess in itself.

 

[Joecoolyo]

Iowa shouldn't be first, and New Hampshire shouldn't be second. They are in no way demographically similar to the rest of the country....it makes old rural white people even more overrepresented.

Ohio, Colorado, Georgia. That should be your top 3.

I heard Illinois tends to do a very good job cramming various national demographics neatly into a single state.

 

[Antilogic]

The thing is though, if it were to rotate every time as you describe, in some election years a Democrat would almost certainly do well and thus get a lot of funding, while in other years, a Republican would be certain to do well.

I'd say that, while rotating regions, it should also have to be a swing state. So right now, Florida, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, and a swing state in the west if there is one (New Mexico? Perhaps close enough...)

The Democratic and Republican parties hold primaries and caucuses independently of each other, and presumably the only major donors to any candidate's campaigns at that point are likely to be core Democratic or Republican constituencies, and not likely to donate to the opposite's campaigns.

What it would switch up is the type of candidate you get out of each party every campaign cycle. For example, if the 2008 primaries started in New York and then Florida, I'd imagine Rudy Giuliani might have done much better than he actually did relative to McCain, Huckabee, Romney, etc.

Who determines when the primary rotated? People will still be complaining that so and so region gets preference over another one.


Ideally, though, I do think that some sort of shuffling is the best option.

It's a combination of the national and state party apparatuses. Nominally, the state party schedules it, but the national party can punish them by taking away delegates if they move it too early. And there are several states (among them Iowa) that basically have a local rule that says "we go first" or "we go 2 weeks after Iowa" or something like that. And the rest of the party (largely) tolerates it.

Iowa shouldn't be first, and New Hampshire shouldn't be second. They are in no way demographically similar to the rest of the country....it makes old rural white people even more overrepresented.

Ohio, Colorado, Georgia. That should be your top 3.

This list is more representative of the US than Iowa and New Hampshire. The only high-population state that sometimes goes early is Florida (and even then, they lost half their delegates for doing so this last time). New York, California, and Texas all went much later in the cycle.

I'm actually all right with political parties doing their primary systems however they want; you still have oddities like states being weighted not really according to just population but their results for the party in past elections, the difference between a primary and a caucus, and superdelegates. Having Iowa go first doesn't make a lot of sense, true, but change is slow.

If anything it would be all right for political parties to have their own primaries through their own efforts, mostly independent of government/state law. That doesn't really change or interfere with third party ballot access in the US, taxpayer money could sometimes be saved, and it's more like that in many other Western countries too.

The Electoral College for the actual Presidential election is of course a mess in itself.

Before the 1970s, it was a free-for-all. States would caucus or hold primaries in different orders every election, and the conventions were much more important in determining both the presidential and vice-presidential candidates. It's gotten really stale over the last couple decades, and I'm fed up with it.

 

[Glassfan]

In that the primaries are "unofficial", outside the law and the Constitution; in that they are simply the historical traditions of the two major political parties, there's really not all that much to get worked-up about.

On the other hand, if this Melinda Wadsley is an actual Elector of the EC for Iowa, than after Election Day she will be required to vote for the candidate selected by Iowa voters under state law.

The two issues are separate and distinct - the Iowa Caucus and the Electoral College are two different things. If Ms Wadsley violates her responsibility as an elector, she'll be dealt with by the rules committee (this happened in 2000) - but it has nothing to do with the earliness of the Iowa Caucus.

This Craig Robinson is not only offensive, but also a bit confused.

 

[Samson]

From this side of the Atlantic, it sounds like a somewhat odd system to me where some states have apparently no say in this decision while others (Iowa) have a disproportionate say. Why does every state not vote on the same day? It seems that would cost the party funders much less, leaving more to fight the actual race. It would appear more democratic. I cannot see the downside, but I know little about it.

 

[Cutlass]

From this side of the Atlantic, it sounds like a somewhat odd system to me where some states have apparently no say in this decision while others (Iowa) have a disproportionate say. Why does every state not vote on the same day? It seems that would cost the party funders much less, leaving more to fight the actual race. It would appear more democratic. I cannot see the downside, but I know little about it.

Logistics as much as anything else.

When people run for president, generally speaking most of the candidates are not well known on the national level. Most of the candidates are US senators and state governors. And you would be hard pressed to find an American who could name the governors of 20 of the 50 states without a reference. Senators are a little better on the national stage, but only a trivial amount of Americans know more than a handful of senators well enough to have a real opinion on them. The advantage of Iowa-New Hampshire is that these places have a lot of small towns, but no big cities. And so candidates can go there and get directly face to face with the earliest voters, and reporters, and this can result in candidates who otherwise would get very little attention to become broadly enough known to give them a boost among a wider population.

Now that is not a benefit in all senses. As was said, those places are not representative of the American people as a whole, and tends to give a boost to more conservative candidates. Not to mention disproportionate power to farming interests, when farmers are now only about ~2% of the US population.

But it does weed out some candidates that just would not have a way of gaining any traction. And it does give traction to candidates that might not otherwise be expected to do well.

Now if all of the candidates had to compete in every state at once in the beginning, then as I say logistics enters in to it. No candidate can have the money, the organization, the resources of people and connections, to compete across 50 states. The primary process is as much as anything else the building of the national organization needed for the running of the final campaign. Those candidates that succeed there can be competitive. Those who cannot will be forced to drop out. If you consider a candidate like John Huntsman, the failure to build a competitive organization early meant that he could not continue the race. And so dropped out early.

The primary process is a grueling one. And it can tell you a lot about the candidates. But it does have real weaknesses, and doesn't necessarily produce the best candidates. But the evolution of it was really about putting the selection of the candidates in the hands of the party voters, rather than the party insiders. And that is why we got it. The alternative is that party leaders select party candidates with little or no input from actual voters. If nothing else, the primary system makes the candidates get face to face with voters, at least up to a point.

 

[Samson]

Logistics as much as anything else.

When people run for president, generally speaking most of the candidates are not well known on the national level. Most of the candidates are US senators and state governors. And you would be hard pressed to find an American who could name the governors of 20 of the 50 states without a reference. Senators are a little better on the national stage, but only a trivial amount of Americans know more than a handful of senators well enough to have a real opinion on them. The advantage of Iowa-New Hampshire is that these places have a lot of small towns, but no big cities. And so candidates can go there and get directly face to face with the earliest voters, and reporters, and this can result in candidates who otherwise would get very little attention to become broadly enough known to give them a boost among a wider population.

Now that is not a benefit in all senses. As was said, those places are not representative of the American people as a whole, and tends to give a boost to more conservative candidates. Not to mention disproportionate power to farming interests, when farmers are now only about ~2% of the US population.

But it does weed out some candidates that just would not have a way of gaining any traction. And it does give traction to candidates that might not otherwise be expected to do well.

Now if all of the candidates had to compete in every state at once in the beginning, then as I say logistics enters in to it. No candidate can have the money, the organization, the resources of people and connections, to compete across 50 states. The primary process is as much as anything else the building of the national organization needed for the running of the final campaign. Those candidates that succeed there can be competitive. Those who cannot will be forced to drop out. If you consider a candidate like John Huntsman, the failure to build a competitive organization early meant that he could not continue the race. And so dropped out early.

The primary process is a grueling one. And it can tell you a lot about the candidates. But it does have real weaknesses, and doesn't necessarily produce the best candidates. But the evolution of it was really about putting the selection of the candidates in the hands of the party voters, rather than the party insiders. And that is why we got it. The alternative is that party leaders select party candidates with little or no input from actual voters. If nothing else, the primary system makes the candidates get face to face with voters, at least up to a point.

Thank you. That sounds like a good explanation of a reasonable reason for the system you have.

 

[GhostWriter16]

In that the primaries are "unofficial", outside the law and the Constitution; in that they are simply the historical traditions of the two major political parties, there's really not all that much to get worked-up about.

On the other hand, if this Melinda Wadsley is an actual Elector of the EC for Iowa, than after Election Day she will be required to vote for the candidate selected by Iowa voters under state law.

The two issues are separate and distinct - the Iowa Caucus and the Electoral College are two different things. If Ms Wadsley violates her responsibility as an elector, she'll be dealt with by the rules committee (this happened in 2000) - but it has nothing to do with the earliness of the Iowa Caucus.

This Craig Robinson is not only offensive, but also a bit confused.

I actually checked, and while some states have laws punishing faithless electors, Iowa does not. Thus, Ms. Wadsley could have legally voted for Ron Paul (If she did go to Washington) and not get in trouble for it, legally. She'd no doubt never be sent to Washington DC as an elector again, but that's about it.

Even in states where faithless electors CAN be punished, the faithless votes still count.

Truth be told, I really don't like the principle that the EC can do stuff like that. And the fact that they can is perhaps the very best argument against the system as it exists right now. That being said, I really don't like Mitt Romney, what he is saying is very little different from the message Obama is giving. I'm rooting these delegates on for reminding certain elements of the GOP that the Ron Paul supporters are still here, and making them pay for slapping us in the face instead of granting a little respect.

 

[holy king]

i know ron paul is kind of your pet, but he really isnt all that important in the grand scheme.

should obama win, in four years most people wont even know who he ran against, let alone what ron paul did or did not do during the primaries.

 

[Antilogic]

Logistics as much as anything else.

When people run for president, generally speaking most of the candidates are not well known on the national level. Most of the candidates are US senators and state governors. And you would be hard pressed to find an American who could name the governors of 20 of the 50 states without a reference. Senators are a little better on the national stage, but only a trivial amount of Americans know more than a handful of senators well enough to have a real opinion on them. The advantage of Iowa-New Hampshire is that these places have a lot of small towns, but no big cities. And so candidates can go there and get directly face to face with the earliest voters, and reporters, and this can result in candidates who otherwise would get very little attention to become broadly enough known to give them a boost among a wider population.

I don't disagree with the rest of your post, logistics and organization-building are important factors here. What I do disagree with is whether or not the same effect can be achieved with different states than just Iowa and New Hampshire. What would be wrong with having a fair like they do in Iowa in Central Park one weekend with the candidates? Ohio's cities somewhat larger than in Iowa, but still nowhere near the size of NYC. There's a pretty wide spectrum here and the primary system favors only the tiniest fraction of it.

You didn't make this argument, but others in the media have defended the Iowa-NH-first primary system by posing that the personal-style of politics in these two states are conducive to primaries (the get-to-know-the-candidate events, handshaking, town hall meetings, etc.). I think this type of political culture has developed in no small part due to the presence of early primaries, and there is no reason why it couldn't be developed elsewhere as well if we held primaries early elsewhere.

 

[Cutlass]

I don't disagree with the rest of your post, logistics and organization-building are important factors here. What I do disagree with is whether or not the same effect can be achieved with different states than just Iowa and New Hampshire. What would be wrong with having a fair like they do in Iowa in Central Park one weekend with the candidates? Ohio's cities somewhat larger than in Iowa, but still nowhere near the size of NYC. There's a pretty wide spectrum here and the primary system favors only the tiniest fraction of it.

You didn't make this argument, but others in the media have defended the Iowa-NH-first primary system by posing that the personal-style of politics in these two states are conducive to primaries (the get-to-know-the-candidate events, handshaking, town hall meetings, etc.). I think this type of political culture has developed in no small part due to the presence of early primaries, and there is no reason why it couldn't be developed elsewhere as well if we held primaries early elsewhere.

I would agree that there is no particular reason for Iowa-New Hampshire, except that it provides a known quantity. It makes organizing the early part a little easier, because everyone knows what to expect. But it could as easily be Maine or Vermont and someplace else. I don't think it would work as well to start someplace dominated by major cities. Once you're in the cities you are giving speeches to 100s or 1000s, not having conversations with a few and getting a 2 way discussion.

I don't know the solution to getting away from Iowa-New Hampshire. The problem is that whenever some other state tries to move theirs forward, those states just move theirs forward as well. And as these things are governed by the states and the state party organizations, this type of competition for the status of first means that the primary system either gets unacceptably front loaded, or unacceptably lengthy as the earliest ones get ever earlier. So it's not really within anyone's actual authority to institute a reform. The parties can threaten states with loss of delegates. But on the other hand they may not follow through on that. And even if they did, the state party may still see that as an acceptable tradeoff for the added influence they have on the final selection.

There are weaknesses to the system, I agree. Connecticut, as an example, ultimately has no influence on who are the eventual nominees. And neither does many other states. By the time we have our primaries, the matter is decided already.

 

[Ayatollah So]

I would propose a system where first primary rotated within regions.

This. The only thing I would add is that small states should get a bias in their favor, going first more often, to counterbalance the natural advantage that big states have in the all-or-nothing state-by-state vote calculus. States that award delegates proportionally should get an even bigger bias in their favor (and the small state advantage should not apply within that group).

In that the primaries are "unofficial", outside the law and the Constitution; in that they are simply the historical traditions of the two major political parties, there's really not all that much to get worked-up about.

We have met the parties, and the parties is us. Hell yeah there's something to get worked up about. It is our problem, not some remote authority's.

 

[mangxema]

I'm not sure what the original quote (OQ?) is trying to say. Faithless electors make Iowa look bad? Wouldn't there be that risk even in a primary?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I heard Illinois tends to do a very good job cramming various national demographics neatly into a single state.

As does Ohio.