Originally Posted by
Russ
I have to say that our Primary voting system totally sucks, and really needs to be changed.
Here's a summary of what's happened so far, which is fairly typical for a Presidential race:
The Republicans started out with 17 candidates, most of whom are fairly impressive. I include in this list: Bush, Carson, Cruz, Kasich, Rubio, Trump, Christie, Fiorina, Paul, Huckabee, Santorum, Pataki, Graham, Jindal, Walker, Perry, and Gilmore.
The Democrats started out 5 candidates, most of whom are impressive idiots. I'm including Clinton, Sanders, O'Malley, Webb, and Chafee. You could also include Biden, who probably would have been better than these five. (as would Bubbles the Chimp)
Iowa and New Hampshire are now over, as also are the campaigns of all but the first 5 Republicans and all but the first 2 Dems. And Carson's campaign is on life support. Iowa contains about 0.9% of the US population. New Hampshire contains about 0.3% of the US population. So together they have about 1% of the country's population, but have managed to eliminate 12 out of 17 Republicans, without any of the rest of us getting to consider them. Not to mention eliminating 3 Dem candidates, along with Biden and Bubbles. Pretty much Iowa and NH get to eliminate over 2/3 of the candidates before the rest of us get a chance to participate.
This primary system needs to be changed, and I say do this:
1. Divide the country in regions - Northeast, MidAtlantic, South, Midwest, Southwest, North, and WestCoast
2. The primary season should be a series of primaries by region, not by state, each primary 2 weeks apart.
3. The order of the regions can the same every cycle, or could shift.
The benefits of this would be that we all get to have an opinion on all the candidates, and all the campaigning wouldn't just be in Iowa and NH for over a year. Also, the candidates would have to stay on message, instead of just shaking hands in NH, and promising crop subsidies to Iowa.
Anyone agree?