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Progressive Populist
Understanding the Democrats' Presidential
Nomination Process
By Rob Richie and Steven
Hill
February 15, 2004
After more than a year of fundraising, speeches and
media conjecture, voting has finally begun in the race for the
Democratic Party's presidential nomination. Even for non-Democrats,
the contest holds fascination, since the race will determine the
Democratic Party's alternative to Republican incumbent George Bush
in November. Choices this year range from the Democratic
Leadership Council-based center-right positions of Connecticut
Senator Joe Lieberman to the unabashedly progressive views of Ohio
Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Rev. Al Sharpton to a gradation of
views in between.
All Democratic primaries and caucuses and
many Republican primaries and caucuses are based on the principle of
full representation (a.k.a.
"proportional representation"). Any
candidate that receives at least 15%of the vote will receive a
proportional share of that state's convention delegates. The
first-place finisher gets a big media bump, of course, but earns no
more than his or her fair share of delegates. When John Kerry won
the Iowa caucuses with 38% of delegates at local caucuses, he won
38% of delegates to the national convention - not that much more
than candidate John Edwards with 32%. While Howard Dean's
meltdown was the media buzz of the moment, he still received his
fair share of 18%of local caucus delegates. If the typically
American "winner-take-all" approach were used, then Kerry would have
won all of Iowa's delegates, and Edwards and Dean
nothing.
Full representation makes it harder for the
frontrunner to prematurely knock out their opposition and ensures
that delegates to the convention will reflect much more of the
diversity within a party's "big tent" of supporters. Back in the
1970s, George McGovern and Rev. Jesse Jackson pushed to expand the
use of full representation with an understanding of strengthening
the party by including more party supporters -- both in allowing
more states to be part of the nomination contest, and representing
more views at the convention.
The major flaw with Democrats'
use of full representation is the relatively high threshold of 15%.
In multi-candidate fields, there is no guarantee that a strong
candidate will win 15% of the vote in any given state -- as recently
as December, some New Hampshire polls showed only Howard Dean
polling above 15% in the Democratic race, and Dean came close to
being shut out in Iowa. As a result supporters may abandon their
favorite candidate out of fear of "wasting" their vote on
a
candidate who won't win any delegates.
One obvious
reform would be to lower the threshold to a more
inclusive
percentage such as 10 percent or 5 percent. That would
better ensure that more Democratic primary voters see their vote
counting for something, and would prevent the nomination process
from either being a runaway for a candidate who doesn't necessarily
have broad support, or a polarizing process among the supporters of
the two main candidates. The nominee that emerged eventually
would more likely be the consensus
candidate.
Another
approach would be to set a national rule adopting instant runoff
voting in the primaries. Democrats already use a version of
this in Iowa caucuses. Participants vote publicly by physically
moving to a part of the room representing a particular candidate.
Supporters are counted, and backers of any candidate with less than
15% of votes at a caucus have three choices: try to persuade enough
supporters of other candidates to join them so that they obtain 15%;
stay with their candidate and have their vote only count for
"uncommitted" delegates; or move to their next choice candidate who
has more than 15%.
This last option is consistent with the
idea of instant runoff voting (IRV). IRV speaks to the increasingly
common situation where the first-place candidate fails to receive a
majority of the vote because of votes being spread among more than
two candidates, IRV ensures a majority winner and eliminates "wasted
vote" calculations. A voter votes for their first choice, but also
can indicate additional runoff choices by ranking candidates: 1, 2,
3. If no candidate has a majority, the weakest candidate is
eliminated, and in the next round of counting ballots are counted
for voters' next highest-ranked candidate who has advanced to the
runoff.
With IRV, the idea of having potentially "wasted"
votes move to second choice applies perfectly to primary contests.
If Dennis Kucinich or another candidate were polling below 15%, a
supporter could still enthusiastically back them and then rank other
candidates next if they wanted to better assure their vote would
count toward election of convention delegates. After counting first
choices, candidates falling short of 15% (or whatever lower
threshold might be established) would be eliminated, and their
supporters' ballots would count toward their next choice candidate
who was above 15%.
As demonstrated by the Iowa caucuses, such
a system not only gives more voters a chance to be meaningful
players and more candidates to pursue their candidacies
aggressively, but it also addresses one of the most problematic
aspects of modern politics: negative attacks. Iowa
frontrunners
Howard Dean and Dick Gephardt engaged in an increasingly negative
campaign, and ultimately both suffered because Iowa voters had other
options and because candidates did better who could reach out to be
the second choice of more voters. Taking the edge off of negative
campaigning in primaries would strengthen the party in
November.
Other changes to consider for the Democratic
nomination procedure include structuring the calendar of primaries
to prevent one candidate from securing the nomination before most of
the country has voted; establishing campaign finance rules that
expand the number of small contributors and limit the influence of
wealthy donors; and rotating the state of the first vote for
delegates so that it isn't always dominated by rural Iowa and New
Hampshire, but includes the District of Columbia and states with big
urban areas.
In the next few weeks let's enjoy the chance for
Democrats to have a real debate about the definition of their party
and its future. But let's also remember how the nomination process
could be improved and take steps toward reforms before 2008.
Lowering the threshold to win delegates and adding instant runoff
voting to primaries would be two particularly valuable, sensible
advances.
Rob Richie is executive director of the Center
for Voting and Democracy (www.fairvote.org). Steven Hill is the
Center's senior analyst and author of "Fixing Elections: The
Failure of America's Winner Take All Politics" (Routledge Press,
www.FixingElections.com)
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