Primary Types

Most states today use primary elections to narrow candidate fields and choose the party nominees who will compete in the general election for congressional, state, and local offices. They also use primaries to allow voters to participate in the presidential nominating process. The presidential primaries fall into two basic categories: the preference primary in which voters vote directly for the person they want to see nominated for president and the delegate-selection primary in which the voters elect delegates to the national party conventions.

Within the two basic types, a wide and often confusing array of variations makes it difficult to categorize primaries. How they operate may differ somewhat from state to state and from party to party within the same state. Because primaries are partisan events, state legislatures and election boards conform their primary laws [Page p376]and ballots largely to the wishes of the major political parties. presidential selection reforms within the Democratic Party have been particularly influential in shaping the U.S. primary election system.

With the available options for presidential primaries, a state may:

• Have a preference vote but choose delegates at state party conventions. The preference vote may or may not be binding on the delegates. Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, and Vermont have nonbinding preference votes for one or both parties. Votes of this type that do not affect the allocation of delegates are known as beauty contest primaries.
• Combine the preference and delegate-selection primaries by electing delegates pledged or favorable to a candidate named on the ballot. Under this system, however, state party organizations may run unpledged slates of delegates. Most states use this system or a variation of it.
• Have an advisory preference vote and a separate delegate-selection vote in which delegates may be listed three ways: pledged to a candidate, favorable to a candidate, or unpledged.
• Have a mandatory preference vote with a separate delegate-selection vote. In these cases, the delegates are required to reflect the preference primary vote. Colorado and Oregon use this system. For 1996 Oregon was the first state to plan a presidential primary conducted by mail. (See Absentee voting.)

For those primaries in which the preference vote is binding, state laws may vary as to how many ballots at the national convention are binding on the affected delegates. In recent years, however, this issue has been moot. Not since the 1952 Democratic convention, when Adlai Stevenson was nominated on the third ballot, has either party taken more than one ballot to nominate a presidential candidate.

Most primary states hold presidential preference votes, in which voters choose among the candidates who have qualified to be on the ballot. The preference vote usually is binding on the delegates, who are elected in the primary itself or chosen outside of it by a caucus process, by a state committee, or by the candidates who have qualified to win delegates.

Delegates may be bound for one ballot or for as long as a candidate remains in the race. National Democratic Party rules in effect only in 1980 required delegates to be bound for one ballot unless released by the candidate they were elected to support. Before it was repealed that year, the rule enabled Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts to sustain until the national convention a losing primary challenge to President Jimmy Carter.

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