An Immodest Proposal for Better Primaries

As long as we're in a period of semi-dormancy here at FPW, allow me to veer off topic and into domestic politics a bit. With the coming of yet another presidential election cycle, we're starting to get a smattering of commenters pointing out the absurdity of America's primary election system. This kind of critique went into overdrive during the 2008 campaign, when the Clinton-Obama clash let to an unusually long and intense primary season, but it doesn't take an expert in electoral systems to realize that making Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina the main arbiters of presidential viability is strange and perverse. Also, as Gail Collins did yeoman's work pointing out on several occasions, caucuses are stupid, their aesthetic charm notwithstanding. And the primary season is incomprehensibly long. Especially when one considers that the actual contest is generally decided by Super Tuesday. Except when it isn't. Then it drags on through June. Bottom line: the current system disenfranchises a sizable chunk of the country, under-represents urban areas, creates weird incentives for candidates, and generally doesn't make a lick of sense.

Substantially reforming it, obviously, would take considerable political muscle. And were somebody inclined to put organizational resources into reforming our electoral institutions, I'd prefer they focus on more important things, like eliminating the Senate. That said, as a thought experiment, it's worth considering what a rational primary system would look like within America's current representative architecture (as an aside, I like Matt Yglesias's idea of moving the New Hampshire primary to Massachusetts, but that's because my ideal form of government would be a global empire with Boston at its epicenter, not because it would be fair). To my mind, it ought to be possible to integrate the advantages of the current primary schedule into a system that mitigates many of its flaws. The short version: start small, get progressively bigger.

Imagine that instead of different states' primaries/caucuses being spread out in arbitrary clusters across a five-month period, there were regular primary elections every two weeks, starting with the smallest states and moving to the largest. For argument's sake, break the fifty states up into five groups of ten, with the ten smallest voting first, the next ten voting two weeks later, then the next ten two weeks after that, etc.* The basic structure could be tweaked, but you get the idea. Start with the small states where lesser-known candidates could still engage in retail politics and plausibly compete with their better-funded rivals (this, by the way, is the only legitimate advantage I can discern in the current system), then progressively move to the larger states where money/organization/media coverage matter more and more. Early victories by dark horse entrants would give them a chance to exploit increased funding and media coverage as the race rolls on, but without prematurely crowning a winner after only a few contests. Furthermore, because the largest ten states make up a combined 53.3% of the U.S. population, the overall race probably wouldn't be decided until the final votes, meaning that everyone's vote would matter. Along the way, you'd get a reasonably decent spread of rural and urban states voting at the same time, though the early primaries would skew more rural than the later ones. And the whole thing would be over in two or three months, not five or six, and we could all move on to the general election.

Finally, I'm reasonably sure this could be implemented via an inter-state agreement along the lines of the one being considered for a national popular presidential vote. Heck, it might even be politically possible, since basically every state that isn't Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina would see their electoral influence increase. And we'd end up with a system that gave voters meaningful choice while conferring greater democratic legitimacy on the eventual nominee.
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*Yes, I realize there are other entities that also vote in primaries, including my once and future home. This is a thought experiment. Just go with it.