The National Primary Day
The National Primary Day |
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Under this plan, all states would hold their primary or caucus on the same day (see Figure 27). The idea dates back to Woodrow Wilson in 1913, but has gained little momentum. It has not been seriously considered by either major party since 1970. (Center for Governmental Studies 2001, 17) It is the simplest possible nominating process. Since it is so easily understandable, the national primary consistently scores high on public opinion polls. A Gallup Poll taken in May 1972, at the height of the primary season, found that 72 percent of voters favored a national primary, 18 percent opposed, 10 percent had no opinion (Congressional Quarterly 1972). A New York Times/CBS poll in May 2000 found that 75 percent of voters would prefer a national primary to the current system (Painter 2000, Marlantes 2002). It is quite likely, however, that voters would prefer other alternatives to the current hodgepodge, and perhaps even to the national primary, if offered the choice, and more importantly, if the implications of the available choices were given full discussion.
Since the vote would occur simultaneously in all states, it would eliminate the bandwagon effect, the tendency for a candidate to parlay a victory in one state to more victories (or stronger than expected showings) in immediately following contests. (Congressional Quarterly 1972)
Another argument is that a national primary would shorten the pre-nomination season, and would thus expose candidates to less physical strain and the electorate to less media saturation.
At the end of their article exploring the basis for legal challenge to the current presidential primary system (see the “Supreme Court Challenge” section), Parshall and Mattei advocate a same-day national primary:
Our arguments rest on the assertion that the current nominating schedule is arbitrary and violative of basic First and Fourteenth Amendment principles. As such, a remedy to protect the rights of qualified voters in late-voting states cannot be guaranteed by replacing one arbitrary method for scheduling nominating contests with another. While proposed schemes for clustering primaries and rotating their temporal order may address inequities created by states consistently located at the top or bottom of the calendar, there is no sound constitutional basis for preferring one arrangement over another. Under any sequencing of primaries, late states lose influence in the nominating process; indeed, front-loading is produced by the states’ attempt to escape a diminished or irrelevant role in that process.
The only alternative, therefore, is to set a single date for all states. A national primary day would leave administration and control of the election machinery to the states, dictating only that the time of the parties’ preferred selection procedures be uniform. Such a specific constraint is justified in order to grant to the qualified voters of all fifty states equal opportunities of expression and association, and the right to cast an effective vote, irrespective of the state of residency. (Parshall and Mattei 2002, 37-38)
H. L. Mencken wrote, “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.” The national primary day is among the foremost of them. It is the worst-case front-loading scenario. If Super Tuesday and Mega Tuesday are weapons of mass destruction, the national primary day is the ultimate doomsday device. In the opinion of the Center for Governmental Studies at the University of Virginia:
... it would almost certainly minimize direct contact between candidates and voters. Campaigns would be waged on the national level, primarily through paid and free media, making it virtually impossible for candidates without personal fortune or establishment backing to compete.” (Center for Governmental Studies 2001, 17)
As a member of the Brock Commission, then Senator Spencer Abraham (R-MI) commented:
To have the selection process essentially come down to a single day of dozens of primaries ensures little to no deliberation on this extremely important decision. It would result in minimal give-and-take on issues such that the succeeding candidate would not be the product of a thoughtful issue discussion. (Brock 2000, 42)
Advocates of a national primary day prescribe a course of treatment for the body politic that is not simply worse than the disease, but actually accelerates the progression of the disease to its terminal conclusion. For instance, Parshall and Mattei do not address the fact that the front-loaded schedule injures not just late-state voters, but early-state voters as well, because a substantial winnowing process occurs before the first vote is even cast. A candidate must raise enormous sums of money to have a hope of winning on Mega Tuesday and Super Tuesday. Many candidate who does not raise enough funds in the “money primary” typically drop out of the race before facing the first voters. A national primary day would exacerbate this problem, not solve it. Their arguments focus on the injury done to voters as individuals to the exclusion of any consideration of compelling state and national interests. America is not simply an aggregation of nearly 300 million individuals, but a carefully crafted federal system in which the interests of individuals, the states, and the nation are constantly seeking and redefining the appropriate balance. To level the playing field into perfectly leveled rubble does not serve the common good. The logic of Parshall’s and Mattei’s argument is that the Constitution should permit all voters to be equally restricted to choosing from a narrow field of candidates. This is nonsense. The letter of the Constitution cannot be construed in such a manner as to violate its spirit. The principle of equality cannot be taken to the extreme result that we are all equally disenfranchised. A national primary day would greatly restrict the number of candidates entering the race, thus the First Amendment rights of all voters would be grievously injured by such a system, in that they would not be able to “voice” their support for candidates who could not raise enough money to wage a national campaign at the outset. Thus there is a compelling state and national interest in a primary system that is sufficiently spread out in time that it lowers the barriers to candidates entering the race, and results in more voices in the great political debate of the day.
The National Primary Day and the Graduated Random System represent opposite poles in the presidential primary reform universe. The former collapses the entire process into a single, cataclysmic event, while the latter allows a measured pace of campaigning. This opens the process to the widest field of candidates, and gives the American voter more choices and a longer time to deliberate.