Adam Reilly does a nice job with his analysis of the quadrennial dysfunction that is the Democratic nominating convention.
He is dead on. The Dems (of which I am one) tweak the rules every four years figuring it was the process rather than the candidates that cost us elections. Thus, we try to narrow the field to give our nominee a running start. We tighten up the rule to weed out candidates. Then we talk about how everyone should get on. The debacle of 2002 is a case in point. Two days and tremendous resources to accomplish not much more than the elimination of one LG candidate.
Would it not be far better to just decouple the convention from ballot access? Thus, we would not have to endure the machinations, strategizing, and horse trading to ensure that everybody gets on. It’s an embarassing spectacle.
How about this – If you get the signatures, you get on the ballot. The convention can still be used to rally the troops and make endorsements – despite the dubious value thereof.
Registered Democrats should have a big say in who their party puts on the primary ballot. It’s fine for a primary to attract unenrolled voters. But to simply rely on signatures would allow, conceivably, someone like Mitt Romney to get 10K sigs to be on the Dem Primary ballot.
I’d suggest, get rid of the signature requirements and allow caucuses and the convention to pick candidates to go to a IRV ballot in September.
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or, get rid of party primaries and do everything the Louisiana way
I’ve been banging this drum for months. Others have signed on as well. A promising trend, IMHO.
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Obviously, for this year, the rules are the rules. But I encourage those who, like me, see deep problems with the caucus/convention process that cannot be solved through tweaks to keep thinking hard about this. Several rules-defenders have said to me, essentially, “you don’t like ’em? Change ’em.” That’s what I hope to work toward.
Sorry, that just made me laugh.
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David, you should realize that what typically happens is every year (or convention year) there are a group of newbies who get very concern about processes, rules, etc., try to change them, pretty much fail, and then disappear from the scene. This leaves the next year to the people who have no sense of the history and believe themselves to have come up with the idea of reform for the first time. That is the real “trend” — and it’s not promising at all.
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The “rules-defenders” have seen this and know this, which is why they say that to you. They assume you will fail…and you will if you don’t know all that has happened before you came along.
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It’s too bad. There’s no question that the rules ought to be changed. But the life-span of the reformer in the party is barely longer than the fruit fly. And they accomplish nearly the same amount of reform.
I think the biggest problem we’ve got in the country is people don’t study history any more. People who go to school in high schools and colleges, they tend to study current events and call it history. … There are just too darn few people in our country who study history ….
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Donald Rumsfeld. Interview with Plum TV, Vail. Colorado. 3 March 2006. lexisnexis.com.
I don’t doubt that your historical sketch is accurate. But there are a couple of reasons why things could be different this time. First, if Gabrieli (or Reilly, though that’s almost inconceivable) doesn’t make the ballot because of the 15% rule, I’d expect there to be serious pressure from inside as well as outside to drastically change or scrap the rule. Second, even if everyone gets on, the “outsiders” to the party are almost certainly stronger and better organized than they’ve been before, and there are places in which ongoing discussions about these issues can continue in public (like this site, among others), which wasn’t the case before.
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So don’t lose hope! The Dukakis-McGovern Commission, which was the last big rules reform effort, basically got hijacked by those whose principal interest was in restricting access to the process, as I’ve written before. Let’s try to keep that from happening again.
Is a party something more than the people who say they are members?
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Remember that Massachusetts has an open primary. Unenrolled (Independent) voters can vote in the Democratic primary if they so choose. They can also sign a Democrat’s nomination papers. Doesn’t the party have a right to make sure that the candidate that it puts forward reflects the party’s philosophy (or at least doesn’t contradict it)?
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The convention is a way of asserting this. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I believe that there needs to be some mechanism for determining the Democratic party candidate that only registered Democrats are allowed to participate in.
to be to end open primaries? That seems like the obvious way to ensure that only registered Democrats get to decide who the party’s standard-bearer is, without concentrating too much power in too few hands.
But remember, now you’re decreasing participation at a point in the electoral cycle where more people are paying attention. Is that better than weeding out candidates early in the process before the election is on most people’s radar screens? I could see an argument either way.
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The other thing I don’t like about that is that for so many offices in Massachusetts, the primary is the election. Do we want to cut fifty percent of the registered voting population out of that?
From the League of Women Voters site:
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Why not adopt the presidential primary rule for all party primaries? Unenrolled voters may vote in a party primary, but if they do so they are automatically enrolled in that party. Of course, they can later change their designation, but most won’t, resulting in a much larger number of registered Democrats (and Republicans, for that matter). Seems perfectly sensible to me.
Read David’s post again. That’s from the MA chapter of the LWV. According to them (and I haven’t independantly researched it but I’m willing to take LWV’s word for it), it’s different in Presidential primaries than it is in others. In a Presidential primary, if you vote in one party’s primary it auto-enrolls you in that party. In non-Presidential primaries, you remain unenrolled.
Sco,
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I think you’re missing an important point here — one of the reasons there are so many “unenrolled” voters in this state is that it preserves their option of being able to vote in either the GOP Primary or the Dems Primary. So there is an incentive to stay unenrolled.
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If we made it a requirement that you must be a Party member to vote in the Party’s primary, I bet you’d see Party enrollment soar.
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I mention NY state because I understand that’s how it works there, but I am so busy with this year’s Convention I don’t have time to research this right now and worry about NEXT year’s Convention or Primary!
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Good discussion, though.
First of all, I don’t really understand why Massachusetts has this open primary system. Why should I be able to vote in a Republican or Libertarian primary, for instance, if I’m going to the State Democratic convention just by switching over my party affiliation right before the primary? Honestly, I’d end up voting for someone who didn’t represent their party values at all if I did this and I don’t think that’s a fair use of the primary.
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The Republican and Democratic (and Green and Libertarian, etc) parties should belong to their actual members. To me, the only exception should be if we were to allow same-day registration and new voters would be able to declare a party affiliation at the poll. But being unaffiliated means that you don’t get a say in the primaries by definition because you haven’t chosen a party. This is common sense. You have to choose a side to choose a candidate. Otherwise, you have to wait until the general election to get a choice. Maybe this would actually force the “independent” voters in Massachusetts to either choose a party or create a legitimate third-party that represented their interests. Either way, I think it would be better for representative democracy if the indies were actually to get more involved in choosing the candidates that end up being on the ballot.
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And if the Republicans don’t want the Democratic Primary to be the election, they need to actually run some candidates. If they’re going to abdicate their position as an opposition party, the Republicans are the ones who are preventing an electoral choice. It’s the exact same thing that everyone blames the pre-Howard-Dean Democrats of doing on a national level: conceding any race that looks difficult. If you don’t run a candidate more legitimate than Jack E. Robinson, you don’t get to complain about how the other side controls everything.
sco Mass does not have an open primary. An open primary is exactly what its name suggests, open. Republicans cannot vote in a Democratic primary which means that primaries are closed. Wisconsin is an example of a true open primary. Because in Wisconsin there is no party registration anyone can vote in any primary. And if my memory serves me correctly, the Republican and Democratic primaries where on the same day.
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I think the Party in this state, as well as many of its members, needs to look outside of its insulated bubble to see how much more effectively many states determine who the candidate is for a primary. A Democratic primary would be one way of ensuring that the candidate going forward would “reflect the party’s philosophy” as you put it.
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As for the caucuses and convention I do not see how you can stand behind those and claim that they reflect the party. Such a limited number of individuals participate in the caucuses and that limited number picks an even more limited number to determine who gets the endorsement. All that work and they only get the endorsement? How dumb is that! Deval will walk away on Saturday with the Party endorsement but he risks losing in the primary. This creates a situation by which the people have spoken if you will yet their voice may ultimately be quieted by people who played no role in the convention and caucuses but voted in the primary. That should make reasonable people quesiton why in the hell we just went through all of the work prior to the primary, spent all that money and time only to possibly lose the person who was given our endorsement.
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Finally, the notion that a candidate reflects what the party stands for is an oxymoron. Officially the Dem Party has a platform. Yet a candidate is perfectly able to declare him or herself a Dem while thumbing his or her nose at the platform. This is a glaring contradiction. Galvin, as Sec Comm, is allowing the invalidly gathered signatures of homophobes go forward with a ballot question that will risks denying equal and human rights to some citizens of this state. This is contrary to our platform. Should Galvin be expelled from the party? He is but one example of many of elected officials who do not follow the platform to a “t” yet are considered to reflect the Party. The caucuses and convention do not bring us any closer to ensuring that the candidates that come out on the other side are “perfect” Dems.
Fine, technically, the primaries in Massachusetts are not true open primaries, they are “Semi-Open”. They are not closed. In a closed primary unenrolled voters are completely cut out of the process.
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And I think you misunderstand me. I don’t claim that the caucus/convention system is perfect or it will give us people who are married to the platform or whatever. What I do want, though, is some mechanism that keeps LaRouchies, Naderites and Republicans off the Democratic primary ballot. If that makes me anti-democratic (small d) then so be it.
1) Elected state officials are delegates. Almost every single one of them.
2) DSC members (for the most part also elected) appoint a large group of “add-on” delegates after the caucuses are over.
So your state senator can appoint 7. Your rep.
This would be more a represenation of the democratic party.
Statewide office holders 50 or more.
You really think that would be more representative of the Democratic party? To me, it smells more like a route back to smoke-filled back-rooms…
The hackocracy has enough power. No need to give it more.
You are saying that Democrats who are nominated by Democrats at the primary and then elected don’t have a good idea of what Democrats throughout the state are thinking?
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A seat at the table of a very big, but âinclusiveâ, state Democratic convention is a threat? The current rules allow many different groups to be represented at the convention. How about the group of people that actually vote in the state primaries in September?
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Why?
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Is it because many, if not most, of the Democrats who have actually won an election do not drink the Kool-Aid the state Democratic Party hands out.
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The spat written about in this thread is a “lover’s quarrel” between far left state Democrats on the outside and the far left state Democrats and teachers’ unions on the inside who currently control it.
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WHAT HAS THE STATE PARTY DONE?
We ban paid ballot-signature collecting.
Honestly, who cares whether signature-gatherers are paid or not? They still have to gather the same number of signatures from the same number of registered voters, right? How does the fact that the gatherers are paid in any respect diminish the validity of the signatures?
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I’ve seen this line of argument pop up several times ’round here, and I really don’t get it.
It’s the validity of the people collecting them that’s at issue.
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I don’t think it’s a big issue personally, but an all-volunteer signature collection effort shows that you actually have some grassroots support. That’s a nice thing to know before deciding whether a candidate is “for real” or not.
Rumor has it that Gabrieli paid $80,000+ to get his 10,000 sigs, and Sam Kelley paid $4,000 to get his (yeah, I know Kelley dropped out before the final count, but as I understand it, he was at least close, if not over).
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Kelley had volunteers working on his campaign. Gabrieli did not, to the best of my knowledge. None of this says anything about the merits of these two candidates, but let’s say Joe Wingnut from down the street had $80,000 to blow on collecting signatures. Does that make him a legitimate candidate? And what about the local community leader who doesn’t have those kind of funds? A bad candidate? Sorry, but I think it’s time we stopped selling our government to the highest bidders.
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Besides, we need to separate the issue of ballot access from the one of representing the Democratic Party. Those unenrolleds have too much power.
Michael, if you forgot to register for an election would you be any less of a Democrat? I know for so many readers of BMG enrollment is a completely natural process, one that everyone assumes is the determinant of party membership. However, being completely new to the enrollment thing I dont’ really understand the “fear” of the unenrolled. Simply because someone is not enrolled does not mean that they are any less of a vociferous Dem than yourself. Some people rebel against having to label him or herself. Some withhold their enrollment just to buck the entrenched party establishment. Some may not be enrolled becaused they just moved here and did not enroll because they did not know it was neccessary. For those who are wondering, there is no “Guide To the Ridiculous, Backwards, Old School Rules of Massachusetts” mailed to a person when they first move here. Perhaps that is why so many are leaving, they never got the rule book and thereby could never get into the game.
Here’s a good one, courtesy Jesse Gordon: BuildingTheDemocraticWing.org
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Seriously, though, I think as bloggers we should take it as our mission to demystify the party and the process. The reason it’s gotten this way is because it’s been so hard to get this information. Let’s change that.
In general I tend to chaffe at over-regulation. If the signatures are being gathered lawfully (read not misleading and the money isn’t being paid to the person actually signing) who really cares? Why create yet another policy that a division of the Sec Comm’s office has to enforce? I think they are busy enough.
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On this particular issue I trust the “market.” That is I trust that those whom will eventually vote will take into consideration that a candidate did not have enough of an organization or enough of an ability to build an organization to gather signatures that ultimately reasonable people will not support such a candidate. I know it is a lot to trust people to think rationally but I am still naive enough and idealistic enough to think that this is possible. A lot of people are turned off at the way Gabs is blantantly trying to buy his votes and way onto the ballot. However, to some degree I think my market theory has been proven by the very man who is “paying off” (this is rhetorically speaking, I do not believe Gabs is literally buying votes) voters. Gabs has run for several offices before and has yet to be successful despite the fact that he throws his money around. People support good candidates not candidates who buy their way to the front of the pack.