An article expressing the opinion of “USA TODAY” appeared on the USA TODAY Blog page on August 30 2007. The posting is entitled “Our view on picking a president: Boot rule-breaking states to the back of the line” and can be found at: http://blogs.usatoday.com/oped/2007/08/our-view-on-pic.html. The article discusses the trend being followed by a few states trying to get their presidential primary election dates moved up. The states purpose of seeking an earlier date being to increase the state population’s influence in determining the various parties’ presidential candidate by influencing the preceding primaries in other states with their results.
The article addresses the issue of bias in decision making. The author (whose name is not given on the web site) also addresses other negative effects that the earlier primary voting would have on individual decision making. This trend if allowed could push the initial primaries into the prior year’s holiday season, almost a year before the national election. If successful, viable party candidates could be produced as soon as early February. The results would leave the two surviving candidates campaigning over the next ten months, with potential results being “ill-considered choices and voter indifference to a long, repetitive campaign”.
Currently the Democratic and Republican parties are moving to intervene and stop the various states. According to the article: “The Democratic National Committee has signaled it will punish Florida by taking away all its delegates at the national convention. Operating under a different set of rules, the Republican National Committee plans to bar at least half the delegates from at least four states: Florida, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Wyoming.”
As it stands today, the system is flawed due to political biases based upon regional differences and the current order in which the states have their primaries. It would be beneficial to schedule the various state primaries so that they went in a defined order with each primary date including a state for each of the national regional zones (Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, and Southwest). The effect would be to see a better overall view of the American public’s view as to a viable candidate based upon the regional differences. The state “scores” could be further weighted by the population totals or candidates that each state provided to the electoral process. This would provide each party with a better idea of which candidate would have the best chance of being elected as president. The federal government might want to get involved and assign primary dates to the states to ensure a more equitable arrangement.
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Ah, this whole process gets more and more complicated. Everyone wants to be first. As you clearly indicate in your blog, the problem is that each decision is influenced by the previous decision -- and therein lies the problem. Each state wants to be the influencer, not the influenced.
So, you propose that we vote by regions. It is an interesting idea. HOWEVER, it has certain assumptions associated with it. You need to state those assumptions and defend them.
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