For just the second time in my voting lifetime the presidential primary in Pennsylvania matters. The combative and messy Presidential political circus has come to town as evidenced by Tuesday’s visit to Penn State by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Senator Sanders is talking about a political revolution. While he and other candidates speak about voting and the will of the people there is at best a tenuous connection in presidential primary politics between your vote and the selection of the presidential candidates.
This year the bizarre and complicated way in which the two parties select their nominee is front and center. Essentially we have primaries and caucuses so the voters can select the nominees for the fall elections. They are like playoff games — except in these playoffs the team with the most points doesn’t necessarily win.
Each state’s party decides on the rules for delegates. In some states a candidate can win the state but end up with less delegates. Some states are winner-take-all, some states are winner take most, some states the winner gets a chunk of the delegates but the rest are awarded to the winner in each congressional district. Some states caucus and then choose delegates and then there are unpledged delegates and super delegates.
Got all that? I didn’t think so.
Let me simplify it with a sports metaphor. To put it into football terms it would be like playing games with different rules in every state.
If Penn State played Ohio State in Pennsylvania the allocation of points would be declared not just by the number of points, but also awarded for yardage, first downs and turnovers. If the game was played in Ohio — a winner take all state — then the winner would be simply the team with the most points. If Penn State played at LSU under Louisiana rules then despite Penn State scoring more points a panel could award additional points and give LSU the majority of the points.
Keep in mind also that scheduling matters. If Ohio and Florida had been the first two states to vote, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio would have been out immediately (or perhaps one would have won their home state at the outset before they lost all that momentum prior to the 2016 Florida voting). Based on how that voting did end up in 2016, with Florida and Ohio at the start of the primary season, John Kasich might have started the primaries with a big Ohio win and huge momentum as the candidate best positioned to take on Donald Trump.
The simplest truth is that the voters don’t really have final say in the presidential primary. For the highest office in the land the party apparatus makes rules on a state-by-state basis and then makes other rules for the convention. If you think the NCAA rule book is a maze try navigating 50 sets of rules in 50 states and then having another set of rules for the convention.
All this has left us with a complicated and as yet unresolved nominating process with no end in sight. If the GOP Convention is contested we may see drama at the GOP Convention in Cleveland unlike any drama we’ve seen since the Democratic Convention in 1968.
But here is the dirty unspoken secret of the primary season — we as a country are paying for this. Yes, your tax dollars are paying for party elections to choose their candidates but the parties don’t necessarily have to obey the will of the people.
We are talking real money here. In 2012 the Department of State for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania paid $20 million to run the primary election. I know not all of that was just for the presidential primary but it is a good chunk of change nonetheless.
In 2016 we could be paying for an election that ends up being disregarded at a contested convention. Your tax dollars are being spent to allocate and select delegates who can be freed under party rules to change your mind for you.
But the convention is a good time, a multi-day fiesta for delegates to carry signs, wear oversized buttons and funny hats and engage in a primetime infomercial for the party nominee and the party platform.
For all his grousing about the party rules, Donald Trump has a point. He could enter the convention with the most votes by a wide margin, but fall short of the delegate majority. After several rounds of balloting the GOP could pick someone who wasn’t on any of the ballots.
At least in the general election the results are based on one person, one vote… oh that’s right the Electoral College (another column for another time).
For the presidential primaries, it is time to demand that in return for our tax dollars to run elections the primary selection process must be one person, one vote. If the political parties want to keep the status quo with delegates and conventions then they should foot the bill for the primaries.
Now that would be a political revolution.
