Presidential Selection Reforms

The presidential nominating process in the early years of the twenty-first century is the product of numerous changes that date back to the late 1960s, almost all of them originating with the democratic party. Whereas average voters once had little say in the choice of the major parties' presidential nominees—decisions that long were largely controlled by party “bosses”—now they play the dominant role.

The instrument for this influence is the presidential primary, and the Democratic reforms dealt with the primary or caucus election of delegates to the national party convention.

Whereas the Democrats made their delegate-selection changes by amending the rules, the Republicans and the third parties have adopted many of the same reforms, though less formally. In some cases the Republicans had never followed the restrictive rules that the Democrats' changes affected; or the other parties had no choice but to follow the Democrats' lead because state legislatures voted the changes into law.

Ironically, the reforms that were intended to open the nominating conventions to more women and minorities resulted in all delegates having less to do. Though a rainbow of diversity, the delegates in recent conventions have played little substantial role in party policy-making—and virtually no role in choosing the presidential and vice presidential nominees.

That is because the primary-driven nominating process has invariably produced a front-runner in each party early in the presidential election calendar, and the mounting expense of running viable national campaigns has tended to quickly cull the candidate fields. The primaries and caucuses have predetermined the identity of the presidential nominees prior to the conventions dating back to the early 1970s.

The changes helped to transform both parties' conventions into archaic events where nominations were declared—and usually approved by acclamation—rather than fought out on the floor. The Democrats so overcompensated in reducing the power of political bosses that they had to find a new way to give party leaders at least a face-saving role in the nominating process, and they did so by creating the superdelegate position, which guaranteed certain elected and party officials seats at the Democratic National Convention.

Moreover, the reforms that aimed to open the process to more participation and make the nominating campaigns more competitive have been thwarted to a significant extent by the “front-loading” of the primary and caucus calendar, with most states moving their contests up as early in the presidential election year as the rules of the major parties would allow (and in [Page 477]some cases earlier, despite the threat of party penalties) in pursuit of greater influence over who would receive the nominations.

Despite numerous proposals to reform the process, there has been little fundamental change, in part because of resistance from the states that have held the first presidential voting events for many years: Iowa, which has long kicked off the process with its precinct caucuses, and New Hampshire, to which candidates have long been drawn for its first-in-the-nation primary.

A pair of plans to overhaul the calendar and encourage a more deliberate process were drawn up by Republican Party task forces, one in 2000 and another in 2008, but both were tabled at the party's national convention by officials who did not want the issue to alienate voters in any state that might be key to the party's hopes of winning the election.

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