Bad Idea From a Good Guy

Ales Rarus stopped in, following some link bait in which I correctly observed that he didn’t like closed primaries. Now, before we get into this let me say that Ales Rarus is a friend of the blog this is just a friendly debate.

I loathe the two-party system, closed primaries, and winner-take-all. If there must be primaries at all (which I doubt), they should be held on the same day in every state and they should be open.

I’d rather we have caucuses where registered party members get together and choose the nominee of the party. Independents want to run or other third parties, by all means let them. As for having primaries throughout the nation for the Presidential election, that idea gives whoever has the most money the ability just to win it out right without having to face voters in Iowa or New Hampshire, or early primary states, completely obliterating a chance for anyone other than the establishment candidate to win. I’m not certain what this accomplishes. On other elections, let every state have its own way, because sprinkling primaries throughout the year, allows each individual state to decide how long they want to put up with a general election campaign.

In the case of the presidential election, the electoral (sic) college should be eliminated or electoral votes should be divided proportionately, based on each state’s popular vote. I’d also like to see the return of only voting for president and making the runner up vice president.

Abolishing the electoral college or making the state results proportional gives people motives for all kinds of mischief. Big city bosses in places like Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, and Los Angeles haven’t had a reason to commit massive voter fraud in Presidential elections in a while. With Illinois and California going solidly Democrat there was no need to rig elections. But if you have a popular vote system, you can bet your bottom dollar big city corrupt machines will start registering votes at every cemetery in town and the whole middle of the country would pretty much never see a Presidential candidate.

So, from what I gather the proposals would entrench big money interests, separate people further from their government, and open the system up to massive fraud. Why is this a good idea again?

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