The Governator and legislative leaders are rushing a plan that would advance California’s presidential primary from June to 5 February.
The means by which the major state-sponsored parties pick their presidential nominees would be on the (very) short list of most absurd selection mechanisms in the world. This move, by placing the nation’s largest state in a more relevant position, would make the process somewhat less absurd.
However, consideration is being given to returning to a bad old tradition of winner-take-all allocation of delegates to the plurality winner. The mechanism should remain propotional, though a bonus to a winner who has either more than 50% or a wide margin is certainly defensible.
(Unlike when the primary was briefly moved to March, under this proposal the primary for other offices would remain in June.)
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Update: The 2008 California primary has been moved to 5 February, with Governor Schwarzenegger’s signature on a bill to that effect on 15 March.
Primaries Gold Rush?
California’s Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger once famously said that he hadn’t come to Sacramento to rearrange the boxes — he wanted to blow up the boxes. Well, he may just do that on a national scale with his plans to move
Scion grafted by Public Secrets: from the files of the Irishspy — 21 January 2007 @ 17:52
More on the Primary Process and its Foibles
Klein is buying into the notion that the up-close-and-personal politicking in NH and the like is somehow useful. I simply think that it is a myth that we often buy into without thinking about it. Further, modern campaigning is media campaigning and I think that media coverage likely influences NH and IA voters as much as the coffee shoppe circuit.
Scion grafted by PoliBlog ™: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts — 25 January 2007 @ 16:24
A national primary?
That the USA continues to tolerate nomination processes that are grounded in mythical “retail politics” of no relevance to administering the world’s most important national office is a real failure of American democratic imagination.
Scion grafted by Fruits and Votes — 25 January 2007 @ 18:49