National primary election in February -- national popular vote in November
Yesterday the Illinois House overwhelmingly voted to create a national primary election for presidential candidates by moving the Illinois primary to February 5th.
In committee last month, Republican and Democratic members both expressed support for making Illinois voters relevant to presidential elections and unhappiness with a meaningless election in Illinois where the winner of the race was selected by voters in other states.
On the very same day the House moved the Illinois primary election, the Maryland Senate voted to join with other states and elect the president by a national popular vote in November. Legislators expressed support for making Maryland voters relevant in presidential elections and unhappiness with a meaningless election in Maryland where the winner of the race was selected by voters in other states.
There are two presidential elections: the February primary and the November general election. Illinois voters -- and in fact, all American voters -- should be central to both of them. We Illinois voters have been irrelevant to both the February primary and the November general election for quite some time. Yesterday brought a significant legislative step to end our irrelevancy for both elections.
There is identical legislation in Illinois to join with other states to create a national popular vote. The bills are HB 858 (sponsored by Robert Molaro with 46 total co-sponsors) and SB 78 (sponsored by Jacqueline Collins with 14 total co-sponsors).
Here is a Washington Post article on the Maryland legislation. Here is the website of National Popular Vote, the organization promoting the campaign (I lobby for them).
[cross-posted at djwinfo]
6 comments:
In which style of election do I, as a voter, have more power?
1. Nationally popular election - the odds of me personally picking the president only occurs if the national voted is tied - say 50,000,000 to 50,000,000. Pretty remote.
2. The electoral system - the odds of me personally picking the president only occurs if Illinois decides the electoral vote, and I get to decide Illinois how Illinois goes. This may happen if the vote in Illinois is split say 5,000,000-5,000,0000.
I have much more power as an individual in the electoral system than in the popular system. In fact, I won't even vote in the popular system, because my vote probably won't mean anything. But in the electoral system...well I might be able to influence how Illinois goes, so I am more motivated there.
First, the goal should be to ensure that candidates treat every voter equally and campaign throughout the nation (and thus include the ideas and interests of every voter in the nation in their platforms). The goal should not to be to maximize the odds of a tie vote where one single vote actually makes the difference in an election. In addition, it seems to me that the mathematical premise of your case is flawed. The odds of essentially a tie vote in Illinois are exactly the same as the odds of a tie vote in the national popular vote. But to make your premise work, there also has to be a tie in the Electoral College and a tie in the Illinois popular vote so that Illinois is dispositive. It's hard to say that your vote is worth more currently when the candidates never ask for your vote in Illinois because all they care about is Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
I have concerns about a national primary, but I'm more worried about the impact of a february primary on illinois politics.
It seems to me that an earlier election will only make it harder for independent, grassroots candidates to build the momentum they need to win primaries against machine backed candidates. I think that would hold true regardless of party.
Would Obama have been able to build his momentum in 2004 if everyone had been worried about Kerry vs. Edwards and the decline of Dean as they were in the first week of Feb '04? Would we have seen the same quality of coverage in the media if the political reporters had been dissecting the presidential horserace?
I think the average state rep campaign up through even congressional primaries will suffer from the colder weather, proximity to the holidays, greater competition for money, etc. And that only helps the combine.
This is very bad public policy.
This is incumbent protection to hurt challengers under the cloak of helping Obama.
It gives too short of a time between municipal elections and circulation. The elections should be in the warmer months. The elections should be in late spring or early summer. Some countries have whole weekends. The petitin challenge process is a joke to keep people off the ballot.
This is very sad for Democracy.
I have to state that I find the idea of nationalizing all elections, to include primaries, preposterous. It goes along with ideologically driven trend to centralize and consolidate political power and homogenize all of the distinct political communities that form the backbone of America.
I would disagree that "the goal should be to ensure that candidates treat every voter equally and campaign throughout the nation". Indeed, how different candidates treat individuals and different groups of people is an important basis on which to base a vote.
And this may come as a shock to the naive (welcome to the real world), but not every voter deserves to be treated the same. Take the incompetents who don't inform themselves. Or those who vote someone else's interest because they are told to do so by a machine cog. Or who votes a certain way because someone else, say their religious leader, says so. Or the slacker who votes his own self interest; i.e. for the candidate who will promise the voter the biggest check.
Should candidates be forced to treat these voters the same as the voter who studies the issues, follows the issues, and votes in the best interest of his community?
I say, Hell no.
Dan, as a blogger who follows political things very closely, I want to thank you for your attempts to devalue my vote and place it on the same level as the lowest common denominator in society.
ma -- I guess you like the idea that your vote is irrelevant, and that the people of Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa are more important than you are. There's no relationship between the status quo of battleground versus spectator states and 'slacker' versus 'educated' voters as you imply. It's a false argument. Let's apply the concept of how presidential elections actually work to gubernatorial elections then. And let's say that voters in your county are irrelevant -- it only matters how people in a different county vote, so guess what: the candidates change their platform to reflect the needs of the residents of that county. And when they govern, their policies reflect the needs of that county. Not yours. I'm baffled why so many people embrace the idea that *some* citizens should have more importance than *other* citizens, as I thought the fundamental concept of our Republic was that all men are created equal.
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