COMMENTARY | This country’s presidential primary election process is about as broke as college football’s Bowl Championship Series, and both are sorely in need of change.
The process is wrought with inconsistency and confusion that the average voter doesn’t understand, and possibly doesn’t care about. Take the 2008 Democratic Primary race between current President Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. The latter actually won the popular vote, gaining roughly 200,000 more than Obama. But, given who is currently sitting in the big boy chair, we know who eventually won the primary and faced John McCain for the office of President of the United States.
How did that happen? Obama scored the most delegates, or a certain number allotted to the winner of the state that holds a primary election. Clinton, however, received the most individual votes from voters. I have a hard time making this process make sense. States with more voters like New York, Florida, Texas and California offer a large chunk of delegates to the winner of their respective primaries.
If a candidate can win key states and a majority of the delegates, it doesn’t matter how many popular votes another candidate receives. What matters are the delegates and super delegates the candidates have their eyes on. Obama carried more states in 2008, giving him more delegates than Clinton.
Another key issue that should be resolved is some states have caucuses and some have primary elections. This is yet another example of the inconsistency in the election process. Both reward candidates with delegates, but the process is different. In caucuses, voters openly show support for their candidate where primaries consist of voters casting secret ballots. Only the states of Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming vote using the caucus system.
We have been taught since we were children that those who score the most points win the game. We don’t place conditions or silly rules on a contest and convolute the true meaning and spirit of it. Imagine if the NBA had a rule that awarded more points to a team at the end of the season based on the number of spectacular slam dunks the team had. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?
The primary process should be amended to where there isn’t any question as to who the favorite candidate is. Let the voters decide who will represent their party in the presidential election instead of “the first one to 2,118 delegates wins.”
Politics are blurry enough. Let the people decide who will serve.