If you thought predicting who will win the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations was tough, just try understanding the system that chooses them. The primary/caucus system is so complicated, so opaque and so arguably undemocratic that it makes the Electoral College look good.
Perspective wants to clear all this up. We would like to offer a coherent, comprehensive and easily digestible explanation of the whole primary system, including Tuesday’s voting in Illinois and 22 other states.
But, hey, we’re only human.
So instead, hang on as we try to make sense of some of the system’s more important aspects. Feel free to scratch your head as needed.
State by state
The national party committees decide how many delegates each state gets. But party committees in each state generally make their own rules regarding how those delegates are awarded.
Most states, Illinois among them, award delegates proportionally, meaning that delegates are divided among the candidates according to the popular vote.
But some Republican primaries, like Arizona’s, are winner-take-all: The highest vote-getter captures all of that state’s delegates.
And then there are states that mix it up even within the state. The winner of the popular vote might get all the state’s at-large delegates, but the rest are awarded by congressional district. Simple, huh?
As for who can vote where, that depends on the state too. Some — again, Illinois among them — have open primaries. You don’t have to be registered as a member of a certain party to vote in that party’s primary. Others, such as the Republicans in California, close their primaries to outsiders.
The history
The current system dates only to 1972, when the voting public was afforded a greater role in the nomination process, said John Haskell of the Government Affairs Institute at Georgetown University.
“You have a commitment, at least in theory, that the public should be the one to decide,” Haskell said.
“In theory” is key in that quote. After all, the title of Haskell’s book on the topic is: “Fundamentally Flawed: Understanding and Reforming Presidential Primaries.”
Good local, bad local
There is something to be said for the local nature of the primary system. Few people outside Iowa can explain how the state’s caucuses work, but for Iowans they are a source of pride. They are integral to the state’s identity.
The downside is that it is nearly impossible for the average citizen to understand the ins and outs of all the systems. And following the race can boil down to an educated guess rather than a known quantity.
Take the caucus system, for example. Famous nationally, beloved by Iowans and used in more than a dozen other states, it is nonetheless widely misunderstood.
The reality is that on Iowa’s caucus night — Jan. 3 this year — Iowans did nothing more than elect delegates to attend their party’s county conventions.
Once there, these delegates will elect more delegates, to district conventions.
Those delegates, in turn, will elect delegates to a state convention.
And there, at last, at the state convention, delegates to the actual national party convention will actually be elected.
Misleading counts
To avoid brain-numbing and eye-glazing explanations, the news media typically just report popular vote percentages. These may be easier to understand, but they don’t always tell the tale.
Take the recent Nevada Democratic caucus, in which Sen. Hillary Clinton took 51 percent of the popular vote to Sen. Barack Obama’s 45 percent.
The media, including the Chicago Tribune, billed it as a victory for Clinton. But because of the way delegates are apportioned in Nevada, Obama ended up with 13 delegates — or “delegate equivalents,” as they are called — to Clinton’s 12.
Both of these numbers are estimates of how many delegates each candidate will end up with when Nevada Democrats hold their state convention and elect delegates to the Democratic National Convention.
Under no obligation
Did we mention that in some states Republican delegates are under no obligation to vote in agreement with the people who sent them to the convention?
They are known as unpledged, or unbound, delegates. It’s unlikely they would vote for a different candidate at the party convention, but it is possible. And their numbers are not small: In fact, about 20 percent of the allotted delegates of both parties are of the unpledged variety. They won’t officially register their preferences until the party conventions this summer.
One effect of this system, particularly on the Democratic side, is that party leaders retain critical influence in the process.
Super, for them
In all states, Democratic members of Congress, governors and other high-profile party figures are given status as so-called superdelegates. Their votes at the nominating convention are not tied to that of the electorate. They can vote for whomever they please.
Superdelegates were introduced in the 1980s, Haskell said, after Democratic Party leaders soured on the choices made by their own voters.
“What happened was the Democrats in the ’70s said, ‘Let’s let the public in,'” Haskell said. Then after George McGovern in 1972 and Jimmy Carter in 1976 won the Democratic nominations, “the powers that be said … maybe we should reserve some room” for party influence, Haskell said.
Thus was born the superdelegate.
A primary pipe dream
Wouldn’t it be nice if all the states used a standardized system? Maybe something in which all delegates are awarded in proportion to the statewide popular vote? And wouldn’t it be great if all the delegates were bound to support the candidate favored by the party members of their state or district?
This would make following the nomination process much easier for average Americans who will have to live with one of these candidates running the country for the next four years.
But it would take power away from the state parties and national party leadership. And that’s why any sweeping change is unlikely to happen soon.
So as you watch the returns come in on Tuesday, remember that the popular vote totals are only part of the picture. It’s the delegate totals — and the arcane, inconsistent system that produces them — that most bear watching.
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azoll@tribune.com
