Now that the two major party nominees have officially accumulated the requisite number of delegates to secure their party’s nomination, I’d like to look forward. How do we improve the nominating process to give us better candidates in the future.
Gary Johnson
Realizing that many reading this do believe that Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton are great candidates and would be great presidents, it is a plain fact that many find them totally unacceptable. How else does one explain that yesterdays Investor’s Business Daily poll that shows Clinton at 39% of the vote, Trump at 35% and little-known Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson with 11%. Do we believe that 11% of the American people have any idea who Gary Johnson is or could pick him out of a police lineup? With apologies to Johnson, the former two-term governor of New Mexico, the truth is that you could drop a blind monkey out of an airplane, have it parachute down to earth and the first 35-year old citizen the monkey encountered could get 10% of the vote in this race right now against these two candidates. Speaking for myself, if I had to choose today, I would probably vote for Johnson even though I don’t know much about him other than he’s a pot smoker who’s socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Anyway, I digress. Especially on the GOP side, how do we keep this from happening again or, at the very least, how do we compel a candidate to earn the nomination in a way that the vast majority, in the end, supports him? How do we avoid nominating a candidate that members of his party can endorse without looking like they were about to undergo a colonoscopy? How do we avoid nominating candidates who are so polarizing and detested by so many? How do we force candidates to pay a political price for lying?
I have seven ideas that would improve the quality of our candidates. Some of these ideas may seem frankly undemocratic and some are unrealistic but in a world where candidates are proposing banning an entire religious group from the USA these ideas are entirely reasonable and would greatly improve the process.
- Pass a Constitutional Amendment about campaign financing, overturning the Citizens United decision. This is one area where I’m with Bernie Sanders. We need to get big money out of politics and we need to get rid of Super PAC’s. This probably would require an amendment to the Constitution because it’s essentially free speech for a Super PAC to run an attack ad against a candidate. But it’s an odious practice. If you’re a candidate and you want to run a negative ad against your opponent, you should have to put your name on it and say “I’m _________ and I approved this message.”
- Require that, for a vote to count, each voter pass a basic ten-question civics test (let’s say five out of ten is a passing score). This is an example sample 50-question civics test that must be passed by immigrants who wish to become citizens of the United States. These are not hard questions: I took the test and got all 50 questions right. A passing score is 30. If you can’t be troubled enough to know anything at all about the country in which you’re exercising the right to vote, you don’t deserve to participate.
- Create more logical space and geographic diversity in the scheduling of the state primaries. It made no sense to have virtually all of the southern states vote on the same day and no sense to do the entire northeast on one day. I understand that it makes sense from a candidate travel schedule but so much about these primary races is about momentum and narrative. There should never be more than four contests on one day. Give the candidates a chance to visit every state where they feel their message will resonate.
- Open up the primaries in all states to independent voters but with a caveat. I would require each state to report the percentage of the vote each candidate received on an overall basis but also the percentage each candidate received from registered members of their party and from non-members. Grassroots members in each party need to know who their members support but also who is appealing to the “free agents” and react accordingly.
- Stop the insanity of early voting in the primary season. Candidates drop out on a weekly basis, events change, news shapes viewpoints. I’m OK with allowing early voting on the weekend prior to the normal Tuesday vote (to accommodate those who can’t get off work on a Tuesday) but to vote four weeks early makes no sense.
- Delegate allocation in all states should be proportional, as the Democrats do it, but with minimum thresholds, as the GOP did in most of the earlier contests. A 10%, 15% or 20% minimum vote total sounds reasonable to earn delegates. In no case should a candidate receive an entire state delegation, the 2nd and 3rd (or more) place finishers should get a share somewhat proportionate to the vote they received.
- THE MOST IMPORTANT: revise the “super delegate” system on the Democratic side and create one on the Republican side. The super delegates or unbound delegates should not be there to tilt the nomination in favor of one candidate or another but should be a “check and balance” against an unacceptable candidate. Yes, I’m talking about Donald Trump here. Hillary gobbled up virtually every Democratic super delegate but she still won the majority of the vote over Bernie and earned the nomination fair and square. I propose this: once a candidate is nominated based on the pledged delegate rules, there should be a required second ballot that requires an affirmation by 50% of the super delegates, each of whom can vote their conscience. If the candidate who gets the most votes in the primary process cannot get 50% support of the party members, that candidate is by definition not one that can unify the party.
Now, regarding that controversial idea #7, which might seem undemocratic to some, this is essential counter-balance to a candidate who “earns” the nomination by lying, berating, insulting, obfuscating, Tweeting and promising ridiculous things. There has to be a check on the irrationality of the people.
So if #7 is too undemocratic enough for you, here are two other ideas that would allow the voters to exercise the right to veto an unacceptable candidate. These would be easy to implement and would be transparent. They would ask the voters the same questions that they’re asked when responding to the polls.
- On the primary ballots (particularly in the early states), allow the voters to select a 2nd choice and a 3rd choice and tally the results in a points system (3 points for first, 2 points for second, 1 point for 3rd). In a system like this, Trump would have gotten a lot firsts but probably not many seconds or thirds.
- Again, on the primary ballots, allow voters to select the candidate they want and ALSO allow the voters the OPTION to select the candidate they absolutely do NOT want. Every “yes” vote could be balanced by a “no” vote.
Finally, if those both seem too odd, there’s one true democratic check and balance that could be implemented (although it would be expensive) and that’s to have a national primary in which the voters would choose between the top two candidates. The argument from all of the failed candidates against Trump was that they needed to get him in a one-on-one race in order to win. Would Ted Cruz have beaten Trump in a nationwide primary? That’s hard to say: Trump gained enormous momentum with his five-state northeast sweep in late April. But remember that the delegate rules were unintentionally designed to benefit Trump, where big winner-take-all victories in his northeast “turf” were easier to achieve than for Cruz in his southern “turf” where the Texas Senator faced a multi-candidate field and proportionality rules.
It is entirely reasonable is that all of the people who did not vote for Donald Trump (or any other future candidate like him) have the opportunity to veto that decision when it was not made by a majority of the voters.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Bodig