The Way America Picks Presidential Nominees Is Dumb
The South Carolina and Nevada primaries are approaching and Super Tuesday — so named during the U.S. bicentennial year to make the party primary process sound like a meritocratic sporting event — looms. At this point in the election season, it seems we can draw at least one conclusion: The major party primaries are the biggest scam foisted on American democracy since the founders cooked up the Electoral College.
The primaries cement the importance of the two major political parties in the American system. This importance is unearned and, aside from the right of assembly, has no place in the U.S. Constitution. The idea that the most qualified or effective president and federal representatives would be those chosen by either the Democrats or Republicans to go head-to-head in the general election is a sham. Democrats and Republicans may have dramatic differences, but they have colluded to bamboozle the country. The primary process is Byzantine, undemocratic, un-American and ineffective.
The biggest problem with the primary system is that it prioritizes parties ahead of voters. In a Boston Globe explainer, Evan Horowitz laments that primary voters don’t even have real authority to choose their party nominees. “Voters have no constitutional right to decide the winner.” Which is true, but misses the larger point, which is that the Constitution spells out no roles for parties to be involved in the first place.
A political party is nothing more than a private club with exceedingly low standards for entry. It’s harder for an unskilled practitioner to join a bowling league than it is for a vegan communist to join the GOP in cattle country.
The modern primary has all the trappings of a true, public election because, over the course of the last 100 years, government at all levels has become involved in administering the polls, monitoring against corruption and footing much of the costs. The whole system is a mishmash with local governments and local parties making their own rules. The government had good intentions for getting involved. It mostly wants to give the party rank and file some say in who gets nominated so that the party elites don’t do all the picking in private rooms, trading barrels of oil and precious gems for favors.