In my lifetime, there have been seven elections where both
major parties had serious primary contenders:
1960, 1968, 1980, 1988, 2000, 2008, and 2016. The other elections in that time have had one
party with serious contenders. Each
time, the first primary election has occurred in New Hampshire. New Hampshire has a statute that “guarantees”
that it will have the first primary and whatever economic benefits and bragging
rights come with it.
Now, the first contest of any sort is the Iowa caucuses,
which gives Iowa some attention, media activity, and bragging rights.
I've never been to New Hampshire. I may have flown over Iowa, but I I've never set foot on it's soil. No doubt, most of them - just like most of the rest of us - are fine souls, good people and good Americans. But they always get to vote first.
What about the rest of America? One
might favor Sen. Klobuchar (D-MN) or Rep. Gabbard (D-HA) who, presumably, will do very well
in Minnesota or Hawaii, but are trailing badly in New Hampshire and Iowa. Had Sen. Harris (D-CA) had a Pacific area primary
first, perhaps she would still be in the race.
This random and traditional balkanization of primary states
gives Iowans and New Hampshire-ites a greater power than nonresidents of those
states to affect the presidential elections.
Let me say that is constitutional – The Electoral College is another example of inequity in one sort, a constitutionally guaranteed inequity, as the losing party points out each time the election is won by somebody who
doesn’t get a majority, the election is close or the Electoral College shows a
blow-out when the losing candidate got 48% of the votes nationally. Was each voter for Goldwater wrong in 1964? Were 23.000,000 voters flat-assed WRONG in rejecting LBJ? Where the 43,000,000 LBJ voters right? Who cares? Under the standards of that time and this, LBJ won the election. At that time, those disaffected just lived with it.
The Iowa and New Hampshire assurance of "first in the nation" is a state phenomenon, But it's isn’t
a part of the constitution. Congress controls federal elections. The Congress (with Presidential consent, i.e., sign a bill
rather than veto it) controls federal elections. That’s important. If this is bad, there is no judicial remedy,
only a Congressitional one. Don't expect the Supreme Court to step in on this one.
We don’t need to amend the Constitution to change this. That
is a horribly slow process (as we will find out in the litigation over the validity
of the recently maybe-ratified ERA) and God forbid that we call a constitutional
convention with America divided nearly equally.
We can address it by changing Federal law. Think about
this: United States is already divided
into four roughly equal parts along longitudinal lines. They’re called time
zones. Most states are completely within one time zone and those that are not
clearly are more geographically in one time zone than another.
The population varies between time zones. In the Pacific
time zone, 16% of the American population live; Mountain, 7%; Central, 29%; and
Eastern 48%. If we divide primaries by time zones, we still will not be giving
two single states the power to largely affect the election. (I haven’t forgotten about Alaska and Hawaii
– I’ve lump them both in with the Pacific.)
Consider a Federal law rotating Federal primary elections
by time zones. Flip coins to see who goes first. Then, every fourth
election, each in one of us will be the first people voting.
Perfect? No, not a bit. But the “perfect” is the enemy of
the “better.”
Mizpah!
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