Traditionally, the Democratic Party has reserved certain states for early primaries in order to create a more level playing field for presidential candidates. The benefit in having a small state vote early is that it gives candidates who have less money and less name recognition but big ideas a chance to take their message and test it in states which have affordable media markets and small towns which are amenable to retail politicking.
Over the years, most of the country accepted the notion that Iowa and New Hampshire had a place at the front of the line. Candidates would visit these two states, make their case, and then take the message on to Super Tuesday or to some other point in the election cycle when they just couldn't press on anymore.
What changed is that more and more, candidates started banking their entire campaign on these early states. So, voters in later states never had a chance to vote on candidates. And in the late 1980's and into the 1990's, the early states essentially ended up deciding the nominee. The early states had gained too much influence by way of the type of campaigns that were being run by the candidates.
Thus the jockeying for a process called "front loading" began. In 1996, California moved it's primary up from June to March, prompting a host of other states do the same so as to not be over shadowed. It happened again in 2000 and in 2004, and of course this year we saw Florida and Michigan test the limits by breaking Party rules and entering the early window. More states would have done this if they could have (an added benefit of front loading was that it gave the presumptive nominee more time to build a financial war chest for the general election).
Yet, with all of the unfairness there is in early states going first, there is still an inherent benefit in candidates only having to play in a limited number of states from the get-go. Candidates such as Howard Dean, John Edwards - even Barack Obama, were able to make national names for themselves because of the benefit of focusing on smaller, early state primaries. Better known candidates such as John McCain and Hillary Clinton didn't fare as well. McCain decided not to compete in Iowa, and Clinton was encouraged to do the same.
But how to break the unfair influence that these early states now have? It's harder than one might think.
A national primary is a bad idea, because it favors the candidate who has the most money and name recognition from day one. There is also no weeding out process, and it could produce a nominee who emerges with 30% of the vote. The "American Plan" is another proposal which, as it happens, seems to be a formal model for how things worked out this year. The National Association of Secretaries of State have previously offered the rotating regional primary plan which is something I've been a fan of ( I wrote a bit more on these plans in a post on April 1).
Personally, I like the idea of leaving the early states of Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina in - and having them all vote on the same day. If candidates don't have enough money to compete in all four, they can focus on one state and live to fight another day in the next round. I'd also like to see a delegate allocation window which starts in February instead of January.
. . .
The problem with all of this, is that the DNC (and the RNC for that matter) can set primary rules, but it's the states that set their own elections. So really all it takes is one state senator, one secretary of state, on person to propose a law moving a state's primary and there isn't much that the DNC can do about it. So we on the DNC can design a calendar, but we can't actually set the elections in each state. It's a delicate balance. Case in point: the DNC spent two years working on a proposed plan in 2005 and 2006, only to see it thwarted by two states in 2007.
The bottom line is that, obviously, our system of nominating presidential candidates is in need of reform. But as much as we complain about the current system, it does work astonishingly well considering the barriers that exist.
The biggest thing that was debunked this year is that Iowa and New Hampshire voters have a higher level of understanding and participation in the process and thus must go first each year. That's clearly out now and it's time that the monopoly that these two states have had on the early process ends (though it probably won't - there is a lot of institutional protection around these two states).
For now, early states serve a purpose that is still relevant today. But as we've seen in this year's 50-state primary, if you give any state enough time and attention - the voters will tune-in and they will turnout.
Oregon is an all vote-by-mail state. There are no precinct polling places.
And it's an outstanding exercise in voter participation: In 2004, Multnomah County (Portland) had an 85% voter turnout. I'm told that the idea was initially posed by a Secretary of State who wanted to run for higher office in the 90's, and he posed the all-mail in election as way to save money. It also creates an 18-day election period.
The rules in Oregon state that ballots must be received by election night. A postmark of that day is not good enough. So election day in Oregon looks a lot different than in other places.
For instance, if you've ever been to the post office on tax day to mail your returns, you know that government workers stand outside with bins in order to accommodate the traffic created by everyone trying to get their taxes in on time. Election day in Oregon looks a lot like tax day in most other states. Election workers standing outside at authorized drop-off locations with bins for voters to hand-off ballots.