A more equitable national primary--a proposal

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(Beware, statistics ahead; also, simplified names of Census racial categories)

The mountains of coverage I've been reading about the various Presidential campaigns in Iowa has unsettled me, I believe rightfully so. Every Presidential candidate bums around Iowa for at least a month, because the voters of this state, along with New Hampshire, have more power in determining the election than any of the rest of us.

And why should they? In addition to being especially agrarian, Iowa is 91% white, and New Hampshire is 94%. These states, though certainly as important as any of the rest, are hardly representative of America as a whole.

At first, I thought a single national Presidential primary date would be an effective solution. It's been pointed out to me, however, that the new presence of super PACs, resulting from the Citizens United ruling, has raised the spectre of dramatically heightened corporate influence in such a national primary. I think I've come up with a compromise that would work well to increase national representation in the primaries, and simultaneously keep a tab on corporate campaign spending.

Ten randomly-chosen states will vote in the primaries on a given Tuesday, say, 31 May 2016. Then ten more will go next week, and so on until all states are accounted for in five weeks' time. The first ten would have to be non-bordering, in order to even out representation in the earliest primaries.

So, let's say that the ten states selected under this new system to go first, on 31 May 2016, were Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, South Carolina, and South Dakota. The combined population of these states is ethnically distributed as follows:

White: 88.3%
Black: 16.3%
Asian: 5.8%
Native Ameircan: 1.4%
Pacific Islander: 0.5%
Other: 2.0%
Multiracial: 3.9%
Hispanic of any race: 14.7%

Or if they were Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Texas:

White: 74.3%
Black: 12.1%
Asian: 3.2%
Native American: 0.9%
Pacific Islander: 0.1%
Other: 6.7%
Multiracial: 2.7%
Hispanic of any race: 22.4%

Or, say, California, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Tennessee:

White: 68.5%
Black: 11.9%
Asian: 7.0%
Native American: 0.7%
Pacific Islander: 0.2%
Other: 8.4%
Multiracial: 3.3%
Hispanic of any race: 21.5%

Compare that to Iowa plus New Hampshire:

White: 92.1%
Black: 2.4%
Asian: 1.9%
Native American: 0.3%
Pacific Islander: 0.1%
Other: 1.6%
Multiracial: 1.7%
Hispanic of any race: 4.3%

And compare to the entire USA population:

White: 72.4%
Black: 12.6%
Asian: 4.8%
Native American: 0.9%
Pacific Islander: 0.2%
Other: 6.2%
Multiracial: 2.9%
Hispanic of any race: 16.3%


It would result in higher travel costs for candidates, but would even out representation in our political system, by forcing candidates early on to a more racially, regionally, politically and culturally diverse population, representative of the nation at large. What do you think?

Seems interesting, but it'd add a lot of uncertainty to campaigns - given how out of tradition such a reform would be. The political class of Iowa and New Hampshire would certainly be pissed off as f*ck about it and I can't imagine how they'd try to obstruct said reform.

I say that 9d10 (nine ten-sided dice) are rolled in sequence to randomly generate the Social Security Number of the next president. If the person so "elected" is a convicted felon, certified "Non Compos Mentis", is in a coma, fails to meet the standards of Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 of the Constitution, or is disqualified from serving as president under the terms of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, then that series of dice rolls is ignored, and another roll of 9d10 is made.

Once the new president is selected, then he or she is sworn in and serves as per usual.

Bunching states up only amplifies the influence of money on the process.

I'm not sure if I buy the racial part of your post either. Florida, Nevada, and South Carolina are actually traditionally early states and are relatively racially diverse.

I think what should be done is to get rid of all of the winner-take-all states and have all delegates be proportional. Also get rid of "superdelegates"(more of an issue on the Democrat side)

They changed it up a little bit this year on the GOP side at least. Most of the early contests are proportional with the later ones being winner-take-all in order to stretch out the process. We'll see what happens.

I think they probably could switch up the order of states with with other states of similar size.

Smaller states going first is good because it allows for grassroots campaigning