The Date Bonus Delegates Model

The resurgence of front-loading in 2000 occurred despite a concerted effort by the Republican National Committee to forestall it. In February 1996, RNC Chairman Haley Barbour appointed a RNC task force, chaired by RNC Rules Committee Chairman Jim Nicholson, to examine the delegate selection rules and to make recommendations on how best to ease the front-loading situation.

The task force suggested that states holding their delegate selection events later in the process be given extra delegates. The 1996 national convention delegates ultimately approved new rules for a delegate allocation system that included date bonus delegates. Therefore, in the 2000 presidential election cycle, states were awarded a five percent delegate bonus if they held their primary or caucus between March 15 and April 14; a 7.5 percent bonus if their event was between April 15 and May 14; and a 10 percent bonus if they held their primary or caucus between May 15 and June 20. These bonus percentages were half of what the task force had originally recommended.

So, as Republican state party leaders set about planning their delegate selection procedures for the 2000 Republican presidential nominating process, they did so with the knowledge that they could have a larger delegate presence at the national convention if they held their primary or caucus later in the season. However, the date bonus delegate inducements were not strong enough to hold back the rush to the front of the selection calendar. As the 2000 selection calendar demonstrated, a number of states pushed their event to earlier in the process.

The result was the most front-loaded delegate selection process in the history of the Republican Party. (Brock 2000, 11)

In reconsidering this scheme, the Brock Commission observed:

It appears that for many states, the current date bonus awards were not a large enough incentive to encourage them to hold a late presidential nominating event. One possible change would be to significantly increase the number of date bonus delegates that states would receive for holding their events later in the year. (Brock 2000, 36)

Advantages

The Brock Commission report noted no advantages to this idea.

Disadvantages

This scheme twists the principle of “one person, one vote” into “one person, one plus x votes.” This distortion of a fundamental democratic principle failed to halt, much less to reverse, the mad rush to front-loading in 2000, yet this scheme proposes to warp the system even more. However, further bending of the “one person, one vote” principle would likely provoke a judicial challenge that would overturn this scheme.