Nice thought, but…
Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad is pushing to end the state’s Republican straw poll, but the state party chairman says the event may still go on next year.
Branstad said Monday that the poll – traditionally held in Ames the summer before a contested presidential caucus – is a turnoff for many candidates and could diminish the power of the state’s caucuses.
…yeah, the rest of us kind of hate the Iowa caucuses, too. And the ethanol subsidies. And, yeah, I will admit it: the Ames Straw Poll. On the other hand: I’d probably hate all the essentially meaningless rituals that we’d see come out of whichever state replaced Iowa as first in the primaries. And on the gripping hand: we’re probably going to pick up Iowa in the 2016 Presidential election, so let me just shut up now.
Eh. I agree, the New Hampshire and South Carolina rituals are pretty awful .. it’s just that Iowa’s have prominence today. (seem to recall a pretty awful New Hampshire tradition of making candidates flip flapjacks ..)
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So .. yeah. Let Iowa have their special kind of crazy..
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I’d like to be more optimistic about GOP candidates not pandering to the ethanol crazies, but .. yeah.
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Mew
All that said, Ames is increasingly useless *because* it had become a decent predictor ..
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Goodhart’s Law appears to apply.
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Mew
I saw a comment years ago on AOSHQ that I always liked. Divide up the states into small, med, large with small primaries first,etc. Within these categories determine by lottery which states go when. Need to break IA and NH stranglehold.
Yep, set some basic cut-offs based on the number of electoral college votes, start the primaries in February with a lottery sorting all States with number of EC votes below 5 getting February and March primary days, between 5 and 15 getting April and early May days, between 15 and 25 getting late May and early June days, and above 25 wrapping up before July 4.
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Hold the lottery every 4 years, with the results applying to the second presidential election following the lottery, i.e. a 2012 lottery would be for 2020, not 2016 .. allows the State party quite a bit of time to figure out how to make hay off the fortune of going first.
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Naturally, politicians being what they are, they won’t change it until there’s a very good reason .. and I don’t see one on the horizon. I do see that Goodhart’s Law is certainly working .. Ames is becoming increasingly useless as a measurement.
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Mew
See, I don’t think I could support that without a few other reforms, because it has a huge problem – it condemns a very large chunk of the country to never, ever having any influence on who actually wins, because it will be long decided before they get to vote, and worse, it will always be the same folks who are in that group. To support something like this I’d need two other reforms at a minimum.
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1. All states must give out delegates in proportion to the vote, not winner take all.
2. The number of delegates that a state gets is scaled according to the number of Republicans that state sent to Congress, with some minimal small amount for states that sent none at all.
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Basically, I want Republicans picking the Republican nominee with each Republican vote worth about the same weight as any other, in any state.
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My preferred solution? Get rid of all of this. Have a national primary day, everyone votes the same day, sum up all the votes nationwide, and if no Republican gets 50%+1 of the Republican vote, have a nationwide runoff a month later. Do this in, say, March and April or April and May.
The problem with scaling primary delegates really strongly to how strongly a state supports the GOP (no matter how you determine it) is that you end up giving outsized influence to the states that are going to vote Republican no matter what, instead of the states that the nominee really needs to win in the fall.
Please cite where it is illegal for a voter in, say, California who wants to be involved in the process earlier is forbidden to move to Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina.
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Oh, it’s not? Well ..
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Otherwise, I have no problem with your post.
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Mew
I nominate California. They can do a surf/body surf/body board competition, then shotgun a Fosters oil can and bbq some steaks. It might get over ritualized, but you could always go for seconds on the Fosters to make it bearable. 🙂