Agreed. Primaries are an odd thing. I don’t like the winner take all nor do I like any where you can’t vote in them unless you are registered in that party. They should also be over a period of time so you can get a real feel for people though no more than 2 months.
No system is perfect but the one we have now is broken for sure.
I wish the primaries were much closer together. By the time it was my state’s turn to vote, it was all over. Have them in a week and don’t declare a winner until the last vote is counted.
Do them democrats vote in republican primaries in the states you list? Basically it should republicans voting in their primary unless it is an open situation.
Forget it. The media determines these matters, to hell with the People who are such dumbasses that they allow these creeps control.
In order for the Republicans to win in 2012, New Hampshire and Iowa would have to be in play.
But there definitely has to be rule changes next time out for the Republicans to stand a chance- regardless of which states lead off in the selection process.
In 2012, the Democrat nominee is already decided. The crossover factor is more than likely to lead to another Republican liberal or “moderate” candidate and another defeat. In other words, McCain will probably be renominated.
Personally, I think the primary system ought to be scrapped completely. Let each county party in every state decided it’s choice of candidate (proportional to number of registered Republicans in the county), and the aggregate results decide the nominee. And this all goes on in a single day.
Barring this, I say close the primaries to Republicans only. NOBODY WHO IS NOT A REPUBLICAN should have a say in deciding the GOP candidate. NOBODY. And again, have the elections be held on the same day, nationwide. Any state party that doesn’t get on board with that has its delegates decertified.
Something definitely needs to change with how we do our primaries. I am in Ohio and by the time we had our primary, McCain was pretty much the only candidate. Everyone else had either dropped out or announced they were dropping out after our primary. There were still several primaries later than ours. All states need to be given equal opportunity to vote for all the contenders in the race.
That's not to say that the primary system doesn't need major reform. It does and it is coming. Just realize that whatever we do has long term ramifications. Closed primaries also close some doors.
My idea is to change the order of the primaries every 2 years. The order would be based on the outcome of the previous presidential election. The state where the Republican got the greatest percentage of the vote would go first followed by the others in order.
This way the most conservative states would have a chance to give thier preferred candidate a leg up on the others.
Closed primaries are a necessity.
Democrats will just switch parties, vote for a Republican in the 2012 primaries and vote for Obama in November 2012.
It is legal to switch parties.
It is legal to vote for anyone you want in November.
Until those 2 things change, there is nothing we can do to stop Democrats from voting in Republican primaries.
National primary or a couple super Tuesdays where the states are rotated each election. If you keep it the way it is, the whigs are going to keep picking dud candidates.
The current "mash all the primaries into January following two years of content-free sound-bite fests masquerading as debates that nobody gets to see" system is a complete failure.
If the R's were smart, they would expend some effort identifying and actively recruiting good and viable candidates -- a combo of the old "smokey back room" approach, with the apparently necessary evil of modern-day primaries.
Beyond that, they've got to reform the allocation of delegates.... like, maybe, putting the small states first and the big states last, so that the delegate selection process has to last into June before a candidate can possibly be chosen.