Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Primarily SNAFU - Redux

Yesterday, E.J. Dionne Jr. of the Washington Post wrote a commentary (A Voice for More Voters) about how moving California’s 2008 primary up from June or March (Super Tuesday, where it was for the 2004 presidential primaries). In the process of writing my response, I realized that my best response was written in 2004, just after Super Tuesday, when I realized that my own state primary wasn’t going to matter.

I’ve re-run that blog below. When Mr. Dionne can answer how it’s fair to disenfranchise even more voters by pulling California further up in the primary season, I’ll consider it.

Mr. Dionne’s commentaries are usually a reasonable, even when I disagree with his positions. But this is one’s not just wrong, it’s unreasonably wrong.

Primarily SNAFU
Originally posted: March 14, 2004.

Super Tuesday is over. Thirty states have voted in primaries and caucuses, including several of the largest states in the union. States like California and New York, Massachusetts and Ohio. And with so many states now finished with their portions of the nominating process, Senator John Kerry is effectively the Democratic nominee for President.

So, what does that mean for the rest of us?

Sure, if you happen to live in Texas or Florida (March 9) or even Pennsylvania (April 27), you might get Kerry to visit. If you’re lucky.

But those of us living in smaller states are S.O.L. Colorado’s caucus on April 13 might as well called off. I’m something of a news and political junkie, and if there wasn’t a U.S. Senator spot open, I probably wouldn’t vote at my own Democratic caucus. Since all the real Presidential candidates (namely Dean, Gephardt, and Edwards) have dropped out already, Kerry’s a shoe-in regardless whether I vote or not. Colorado’s caucus is a joke, and a particularly sad one at that.

And we’re not the only ones with this problem. Everything that happens in the primaries and caucuses after Super Tuesday is moot, at least as far as selecting a Presidential nominee is concerned. I’m feeling more than a little disenfranchised, and if you aren’t lucky enough to live in a state that’s held their primary by Super Tuesday, you should be too. That means voters in the following states are just as screwed as I am: Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, West Virginia, and Wyoming (and lets add American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands too that list, just for good measure).

By my estimates, this effectively disenfranchises somewhere between 14% and 21% of voting population of the United States, namely those Democratic voters who didn’t vote by March 3. Pissed off yet?

If not, you should be. If this year had a contested Republican ticket, we’d be looking at approximately 47% of the United States electorate.

(The percentages above were determined by the population of the states who haven’t voted as of March 3, approximately 127 million people, and assuming that the percentage of voters out of that 127 million people, the percentage of potential voters was constant across the population.)

Think about the unfairness inherent in that statistic for a minute. Just because we happen to live in Colorado (or Texas, or Pennsylvania, or Puerto Rico), we don’t matter to the political process that determines who gets to face Bush in the general election.

What is really, truly FUBAR is this: if even 5% of the voters in a state primary were found to have been disenfranchised due to their race, disability, age, gender, or religion, that state’s election authorities would come down on the responsible parties like a ton of bricks. And then the feds would come down on the election authorities like four tons of scrap iron. And yet, somehow, disenfranchising 14-21% of the entire voting-age population of the USA is ok.

I could go off on the Democratic and Republican (and Green, and Freedom) parties for not working to fix a problem of this magnitude, but there’s really no point. While everyone involved could really use a good reaming out, I’d have to ream out the majority of the people in the country, regardless of party affiliation. The fact that most primaries and caucuses nationwide are closed to independents arguably makes many of the states themselves complicit. And I’d have to include myself in that new-orifice-ripping, too.

So instead, I’d like to propose a solution. Leave Iowa and New Hampshire alone for the sake of tradition, with their historical “first-in-the-nation” status. But after that, enact a federal law that strips away the individual state’s rights to set their own primary or caucus date. Force the small states to hold their nomination elections first, then the mid-sized states, and finally the biggest states. This just might force campaigning nominees to actually pay attention to, and actually campaign in, all the states.

Think about it. Putting California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas (the most populous 10 states) dead last and on the same day would mean that over 50% of the Democratic delegates for Democratic nominee this year would have been in play on that last day. (Those 10 states presently have 54% of the population of the country.) Since the nominee wouldn’t have everything wrapped up until the last day of the primary season, those of us living in smaller states might actually have the opportunity to have our votes mean something.

Now, some people will whine that this strips away a vital state right, namely the right to determine what day the primaries or caucuses are held. To some extent, that’s true, but federalism has been overruled in the past in order to re-enfranchise voters. The Supreme Court did it directly when they tossed out Jim Crow laws and the federal laws requiring that states upgrade their voting equipment after the SNAFU that was the 2000 Florida recount did it again. This would be little different.

I’m sorry, that’s not entirely true. It would be dramatically different.

This kind of law could re-enfranchise between 14% and 47% of the United States’ voting-age population, depending on the election year. I think that’s worth a little erosion of a traditional state right.