The first primaries were around 1920. Before that, the party process was all smoky back room stuff.
Rewind 100 years before even that, to the time the constitution was being discussed, and IIRC, one George Mason was making remarks about being careful about spreading the vote around, because once given, it is really hard to take away.
Giving the vote to a decadent electorate is doom for the country. We're doomed.
You are so right. The Daily Caller has been covering the (Radical Anti-) “White Privilege Conference” in DC. The inmates are running the asylum.
There was a time when only property owners were allowed to vote.
Which leads to the question, if 47% pay no income tax, why are they allowed to vote?
Is voting that “right” perhaps a privilege to be “earned?”
The only people who should be allowed to vote are married men who live with their children and the children’s mother. No single people, no divorcees, no shackups, no widows and widowers. Looting of the treasury would be reduced.