Now that voters in states comprising approximately 1.4 percent of the U.S. population have weighed in, many pundits have declared the outcome to be assured.
Following caucuses in Iowa and a primary in New Hampshire, people who follow such things are just about ready to declare Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for the 2024 presidential election. On the Democratic side, President Joe Biden has drawn no serious challengers and has been the presumptive nominee since the beginning of the campaign.
Two weeks into the nominating process, thoughtful Americans should be able to agree on one thing, even if they disagree about the candidates: This is no way to choose a president.
The process for whittling the field to two candidates for the November election disenfranchises most voters, belies democratic notions and stands as one of the major flaws in American politics. That is evident in the Republican balloting this year; it is equally obvious when the Democrats have a competitive race rather than a sitting president seeking reelection.
In the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses, Trump received 56,260 votes and won 20 of the state’s 40 delegates to the Republican National Convention. In the New Hampshire primary last week, he received 176,392 votes and 12 of 21 delegates to the convention.
Trump might cruise to the Republican nomination; he might not. But the oversized impact of two small-population states can skew the perception of voters elsewhere and can lead strong candidates to drop out of the race before most voters have had an opportunity to participate.
The impact of the first two states in the countdown often is overstated. In 2020, Biden finished fourth in Iowa’s Democratic caucuses and fifth in the New Hampshire primary. He revived his campaign by winning in South Carolina, went on to secure the nomination, and soundly defeated Trump in the general election.
Whether or not Iowa and New Hampshire are bellwethers for the campaign, the inordinate amount of attention they receive poorly serves the other 98.6 percent of Americans. As The Washington Post has written editorially: “The quirky, tradition-bound way in which political parties select their presidential standard-bearers has become less and less reflective of the dynamic, vast and diverse country the nation’s chief executive will lead.”
Tradition is, indeed, the only foundation for the current system, and officials in Iowa and New Hampshire desperately cling to their status at the head of the line. We can’t blame them; having candidates spend months courting voters and having national media highlight issues that are important to those voters is beneficial.
But it is time for the two major parties — which control the nominating process — to actually embrace their rhetoric of offering a big tent with room for everybody.
The best solution would be regional primaries, in which all western states would hold presidential primaries on the same day. Each area of the country would have simultaneous primaries on different dates, giving candidates weeks to visit each region while talking to voters and gleaning an understanding of their issues. The region that is earliest on the calendar would rotate with each presidential cycle.
Presidential primaries are not dictated by the U.S. Constitution; aside from voting laws that apply to all elections, they are not governed by federal law. They are at the whim of the political parties, and those parties should be willing to acknowledge the flaws in the current system.
