For those living in states with late caucuses or primaries

Post Reply New Topic

As a resident of Oregon, the state's primary is in May,
but there is a possibility that it all may change in the 2012 elections.

Here's how.

The entire country will be divided up into four regions.
The first region will have primaries in March, then the next region in April, and so on.
In the following presidential elections, the next region will be first to vote.

Exceptions are Iowa, New Hampshire, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands,
since the first two have caucuses & primaries in January.

Puerto Rico, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands
will hold their own caucuses & primaries as they see fit
since they are not part of the mainland.

What do you think?

Dumb idea, in my opinion. What if the first region to go is the South? We know that the South is not representative of the country as a whole, but candidates who do poorly in that region's primaries will be forced to drop because no one will lend credibility to their campaign making a comeback and they won't receive any media coverage. The same issue will be there regardless of which region goes first-the Northeast is not representative of the country as a whole either, and their going first would put a very liberal bias to the election. Anyways, who has the power to decide centrally when a state will have its primary/caucus? I'm pretty sure that's a state-by-state thing, and it would be next to impossible to get everyone to agree to a centralized system unless you just have a national primary.
Besides, I don't like the fundamental nature of our political system, the least of my worries is when we hold primaries. I'd rather focus on introducing some real competition to the system by breaking down the two (nearly identical) big parties and allowing a number of smaller parties to fill in the void.

The South is not representative of the nation as a whole. However, the South votes solidly Republican. With other parts of the country being less monolithic, the whole country ends up going with the solid South.