In the
early years of our nation Presidential candidates were chosen by a Caucus of
the members of Congress who considered themselves loosely affiliated with the
parties, i.e. Federalist or Democratic.
The last such Congressional Caucus was held in 1824. There were five candidates for President that
year (one John Calhoun ultimately dropped out and became everybody’s candidate
for Vice President). The caucus was
controlled by supporters of William Crawford of Georgia. And while there were congressmen who
supported Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams there were few behind Andrew
Jackson. His supporters throughout the
country began having state legislative bodies adopt nominating resolutions
declaring for Jackson’s candidacy. Jackson campaigned against what he called
King Caucus and in support of popular election of the President. Though Jackson
did not win in 1824 John Quincy Adams who did was not the caucus
candidate.
The
rematch in 1828 of Adams and Jackson which the latter won saw the complete
defeat and elimination of King Caucus.
In 1832 Jackson had the Democrats copy the Anti Masonic concept of a
national convention and from then on national conventions were used to nominate
Presidential tickets. After 1832 the
political process battle became how to select delegates to the national
conventions.
At the
turn of the 20th century direct primaries were instituted in many states to
allow the voters to choose the party candidates for public office. And, at the Presidential level a preferential
primary was adopted in many states which allowed the voters to express their
preference among candidates while still allowing the delegates at the national
convention the authority to choose the nominees. With John F Kennedy’s nomination in 1960 the
political establishment clearly accepted that the preference primaries were in
fact choosing the candidates. After the battle of 1968 the Democrats, and then
the Republicans, began changing their rules to require that delegates chosen to
the convention either by primary or local and state convention should express
their presidential preference before hand and consider themselves bound to
follow their public choice.
Many
states preferred to stay with their system of state conventions choosing
national delegates and so the manner of choosing delegates to the state
conventions began to figure into the Presidential campaigns. In 1972 George McGovern’s campaign encouraged
the neighboring state of Iowa to have the delegates that were chosen at
precinct level party caucuses to attend county conventions that would choose
delegates to the state convention to be chosen at all these levels expressing a
candidate preference. McGovern then won
the preferences and used that to catapult himself into more serious contention
in the following primaries. In 1976
Jimmy Carter a relatively unknown former Governor Georgia started in 1975 to
campaign in Iowa to win these preferences at the precinct caucuses and did so
which grabbed media attention - vaulted Carter into the first rank of
Democratic Presidential candidates that year and the Iowa caucuses became the
first in the nation expression of popular support for Presidential candidates.
And
that was of course true last week when on Feb.1 Iowa held their precinct
caucuses. The system, first designed in
1972, has become more complex in fact one could call it a mathematical
nightmare. Democrats require viability
thresholds, regrouping without necessarily full recounting, selection of county
convention delegates proportionally allocated to the candidate groups, a
rounding off system to determine the exact allocation of county delegates and
even a coin toss to decide who gets the delegate if the candidate groups are
equal in number. The state party then
reports to the media not the number of Democrats in each precinct who supported
each candidate; no, nor the number of delegates by candidate chosen in each
precinct to attend the county convention.
The state using a mathematical formula that seems to defy explanation
translates this data into “delegate equivalencies” which I can only assume
means how many delegates each candidate will have at the state convention after
the county conventions meet and select other delegate. These delegate equivalencies both raw number
and percentage are what the public and the media are given as the Iowa caucus
results e.g. on Feb 1 Clinton had 701 delegate equivalencies and Sanders 697 --
“a virtual tie”.
The complexities
of the Democratic caucuses in Iowa really do reduce the value of the exercise
which is unfortunate because hundreds of thousands of Iowa voters come out to
participate. The Democrats have evolved a system that is too complex, so
complex in fact that state party workers and group leaders of both candidates
often had trouble understanding what the next step or the next mathematical
computation was. Even the Republican
caucus system which is much simpler and is basically a paper ballot vote for
President so distorted the reported results in 1980 and in 2012 in such a way
as to impact on the subsequent Republican nominating process.
Andrew
Jackson wouldn’t refer to this as King Caucus he’d probably call it Rotten
Caucus. And he’d be right. The candidates for one national public office
in the United States of America chosen by the entire national electorate should
be chosen in a manner that reflects direct democracy. There should be a
national primary, with a run off if no candidate gets at least 40% of the vote
the first round (40% because that’s what Lincoln got in 1860 and he turned out
pretty good). If the political
establishments can’t handle the democracy of a national direct primary then let
there be four regional primaries over say a two month period allowing for the
candidates to campaign in all the states.
And assuming our political leaders find that approach too radical than
at the very least we should abolish the caucus system for selection of
Presidential candidates and require every sate to hold a direct primary. And we should use the good features of the
Iowa system - allowing same day registration and party selection; allowing 17
years old who will be 18 by the general election to vote; essentially making
every citizen’s vote of equal weight.
Al
Smith, Democratic Presidential candidate in 1928 is reputed to have said “The
only cure for the ills of democracy is more democracy”. The caucus system used in Iowa and variations
used in a large number of states is broken and unrepresentative of the
population at large. We don’t need to
fix it or tweak it we need to Abolish it.
Let the People decide who their President will be at every step of the
process - and that includes abolishing the Electoral College and voting
directly for President in November (but that’s a subject for another post).
4
February 2016
