The Packwood Plan
The Packwood Plan |
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Senator Robert Packwood (R-OR) was an early proponent of regional primaries. He introduced a bill (S 3566) in 1972 that would have organized the country into five regions, roughly equal in population. The five regional primaries would be held once per month between March and July. The order of the primaries would be determined by lottery. The regional ballots would contain the names of candidates judged to be serious contenders by a federal elections commission (the FEC did not yet exist); however, other candidates could petition to be included on the ballot. Delegates would be awarded to candidates in proportion to the vote in each state provided they polled above a threshold of five percent. (Congressional Quarterly 1972) Table 20 and Figure 43 show a possible schedule for 2004. Figure 44 and Figure 45 are corresponding political and geographic maps.
This plan treats the regions of the country equally, randomly placing them in the schedule from one quadrennial cycle to the next. Senator Packwood believed that breaking the primaries into five parts and spreading them over four moths would allow a candidate with limited resources to enter the first primary to test his support. “In short, regional primaries would a allow a candidate to gracefully withdraw if his campaign failed to catch fire. They would also allow a smoldering ember to be built into a blazing bonfire.” (Congressional Quarterly 1972)
By eliminating small, early primaries, however, this plan obliterates any possibility of grass roots campaigning. In each of the regional primaries, candidates would have to have the money and organization to reach one-fifth of the nation’s electorate. When Senator Packwood proposed his plan in 1972, only one-third of the states held primaries (see Figure 26). Now, nearly all of them do, and this has greatly increased the cost of campaigning. Only the most well-funded candidates would be able to compete with reasonable success in the first regional primary, thus the field would be very quickly narrowed to two or possibly three candidates in each party.
In any given presidential election year, one region of the country is favored over all others by being placed first in the schedule. This raises the specter of the presidency devolving upon a succession of regional favorite sons rather than on the best choice for the nation as a whole. This may delegitimate the office of president, as incumbents are by turns viewed by the people as “the South’s president” or “the West’s president.”
Compared to the Packwood Plan, the Graduated Random System allows a much more gradual ramp-up in the extent and expense of campaigning. Grass roots campaigns with shoestring budgets would be competitive through several election intervals, giving them time to gather momentum. This opens the process to the widest field of candidates, giving the American voter more choices and a longer time to deliberate.
Like the Packwood Plan, the Graduated Random System involves a random process for determining the position of each state in the schedule; however, while the Packwood Plan gives an overwhelming advantage to one particular region in a given presidential year, the Graduated Random System picks individual states at random rather than whole regions, bringing more regional balance to the system.