Senator Nelson's Primary Plan - A Lot To Like

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida is proposing a mammoth change to the Presidential primary process, which has turned this year's election into a bit of a farce. According to CNN, Nelson's proposal has two distinct parts. First is the change in how we conduct primaries, and the second is the elimination of the Electoral College. The first bears consideration, but the second should be dismissed out of hand. I hope he doesn't introduce them joined together in one bill.

I'll deal with the Electoral College issue first. Electors within the Electoral College are state-centric - each state gets two electors for their two Senators, plus one elector for each congressional seat in each state. While today it's not a perfect system, it was initially designed to prevent the domination of states with large voter populations from choosing the President. As the country grew, and the population in states such as Florida, Texas, and California grew (thus increasing 1. their congressional seats, and 2. their electors), larger states were given more clout in the Electoral College. But it's certainly not as large a discrepancy as it would be if the Presidential election was just by overall popular vote. In that case, candidates could essentially become President by overwhelmingly winning the popular vote in a few  large states, making Presidential votes in smaller states irrelevant. That idea, I believe, is dead on arrival.

I'm much more amenable to the idea of reforming the primary system, although doing so would violate just about every federalist bone in my body. Nelson's basic proposal is similar to a suggestion I made in a post on December 20th, 2007: We've Got to Change the Primary Process, but with larger regional primary groups. Here's the crux of Nelson's primary proposal:

Specifically, Nelson said he will propose six rotating interregional primaries that "will give large and small states a fair say in the nomination process." (pjc-see note below)

These primaries would be conducted on dates ranging from March to June, Nelson said, taking the place of the current early-voting states Iowa and New Hampshire -- which critics long have argued aren't representative of the American electorate.

The dates initially would be set by a lottery system for the 2012 election and would rotate positions in successive elections.

The state party apparatuses will freak out, as they should. Up until now, the primary system is up to each individual state, even though it has to do, ultimately, with a federal election. But as the ultimate contest is a federal election, it could be argued that that a proposal such as Nelson's would be constitutional.

I don't see what other option we have. This year, setting up the primaries was like herding cats. It turned into a national embarrassment. I know that on the Republican side it gave the party a candidate that was chosen largely by independents and Democrats, not by the GOP base. As for the Democrats, this primary season could very well break up the modern Democratic Party as we know it.

Note: Nelson's aforementioned premise in the regional primaries giving "large and small states a fair say in the nomination process" seems to contradict his proposal to make the Presidential election popular vote only. Therefore, I don't think his Electoral College position is a make-or-break issue for the forthcoming bill.