The Democratic Party presidential nomination system and the Electoral College share a fatal flaw: both allow a candidate who did not win the most votes to secure victory anyway. If the Democrats advance a nominee who failed to win the most votes during the primary, a political crisis awaits them.
Several presidential candidates have already questioned the legitimacy of the Electoral College, and prominent Senate Democrats recently introduced a constitutional amendment to abolish the institution entirely. However, condemning the Electoral College while retaining the current nomination system is no longer a sustainable double standard.
The problem begins with superdelegates—delegates unaccountable to the results of their state’s primary or caucus. Superdelegates were not eliminated by the party in its post-2016 primary reforms, only barred from the first convention ballot.
No Democratic convention has moved beyond the initial ballot since 1952, but the unusually large 2020 field of candidates creates the possibility of a “contested” convention. If this occurs, the “pledged” delegates awarded based on primary and caucus results will no longer have exclusive power to decide the nominee. Instead, candidates will need to jockey for both superdelegates and the release of pledged delegates from their competitors in order to secure a majority of all delegates and with it the nomination. In other words, in a contested convention there is no guarantee that the popular vote winner in the primaries becomes the nominee.
But the Democratic popular vote problem arises long before the convention. In every state, each candidate is required to meet a 15% threshold in order to receive any delegates from the contest. Delegates that would have been awarded to candidates below 15% are instead redistributed proportionally among the candidates who cleared the threshold.
Like the Electoral College, this violates the one person one vote principle. In 2016, over five million voters cast a ballot in the California Democratic primary—if a candidate had received only 14%, those roughly 700,000 votes would have earned no delegates and effectively not have counted. That is more votes than the entire 2016 Democratic turnout in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada combined.
How then to avoid the political catastrophe of violating the popular vote in the primary? The solution is simple: circumvent party rules by going directly to the most powerful stakeholders in the 2020 nominating process—the candidates themselves. At the debates, the moderator should ask every Democrat on the stage a clear yes or no question:
“If no candidate secures the nomination on the first ballot at the convention, will you drop out of the race and release your delegates to the candidate who won the most primary votes?”
On this question, there is no room for equivocation—good luck to any Democrat who tries to defend a process that ignores the popular vote. With caucuses now required to release raw vote tallies, 2020 will be the first time in the history of the Democratic Party that the exact vote count will be publicly reported.
This approach is exactly what 14 states and the District of Columbia have already adopted by signing the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (a system DNC Chair Tom Perez has praised), which if implemented by enough states would supplant the Electoral College and award the presidential election to the popular vote winner. The logic is identical: bypass flawed rules in order to ensure a just outcome.
There are legitimate concerns about a nominee advancing with only a plurality of the vote—a ranked choice primary system offers a better long-term solution. In the interim, a pledge to respect the popular vote in the primary would remove a potent attack from the arsenal of President Trump and Republicans, who would undoubtedly exploit any whiff of popular vote hypocrisy on the part of Democrats and worse, wield it as a cudgel to sow further distrust in the Democratic Party and the democratic process—both outcomes the American political system cannot afford. The time to draw the line in the sand is now, long before it is clear which candidates stand to lose or gain.
If the ethos of the Democratic Party is a commitment to democracy and the universality of voting rights, then the current structure of the presidential nominating process remains a glaring incongruence. Anything less than the popular vote victor securing the nomination is beneath the Democratic Party and the American values it fights to protect.
SomervilleTom says
This “issue” was raised and beat to death in the 2016 primaries.
I have no problem with the proposed pledge. At the same time, I think this piece greatly exaggerates the risk. I am reminded of the extreme measures the GOP has promoted to solve the similarly rare “issue” of widespread voter fraud.
I think we’ll see the field of candidates shrink dramatically as we get closer to convention. The last time I remember a Democratic nomination that was out of sync with the electorate was in 1968, and I think the party responded to that effectively and quickly. To wit:
– George McGovern
– Jimmy Carter
– Walter Mondale
– Michael Dukakis
– Bill Clinton
– Al Gore
– John Kerry
– Barack Obama
– Hillary Clinton
Each of those was supported by a clear majority of Democratic voters.
I’d like us to spend rather more time restoring decency, rationality, and fairness to our government and rather less time arguing about superdelegates and voting systems.
Charley on the MTA says
In theory I agree, but here’s where it gets complicated …
I mean … correct me if I’m wrong, but a caucus just isn’t a regular old vote where you show up, ink a box, and leave. It still requires a considerably higher amount of time commitment, and I don’t think one can just equate caucus votes to regular primary votes … pretty sure that’s still apples and oranges.
(Didn’t Obama win in ’08 because of the caucuses? Didn’t HRC have a higher “raw” vote total? Anyone?)
SomervilleTom says
My naive understanding is that caucuses exist precisely in order to avoid forcing a regular old vote.
Christopher says
The chances of this happening are minute, and if it does come to pass I WANT the convention to decide what is best for the party, and I assume the person with the most popular votes will have a very strong case for the nomination on that basis.
Trickle up says
It’s an open question, in this day and age, whether there is a legitimate role for the nominating convention in selecting the nominee. Why not have a single national IRV primary and be done with it?
But it is clear to me that if we are going to count “votes,” as Jack M would have us do, we would need a uniform ballot and rules. No more caucuses, of course, but also a single definition of who can vote (independents in or out?) and for whom.
The balloting really does need to happen on the same day, or some states would have an unfair advantage depending on when they fell in the process.
Of course we have all of those dynamics under the current system, but the convention is the spackle that holds everything together. However they got there, every delegate is seated with an equal vote.
You can’t say that about the “votes” that Jack holds so dear; they are not equal at all, and some of them are not even votes.
jconway says
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I think Perez and folks like Nina Turner did a good job forging a compromise on this. Maybe too good of a job, since there is definitely a scenario where the big field stays too big too far into the primary. Can’t kvetch about superdelegates since they now can’t vote unless there’s a second ballot at the convention, which is honestly the only time when their function would be needed. The debates are about as fair as they can be, Steve Bullocks whining notwithstanding. Again maybe too fair.
I’m all for killing caucuses and making every primary a winner take all IRV model.
pogo says
Isn’t the fundamental problem the fact that political parties are private organizations that act in the best interests of the members of the organization and not the greater good of our ongoing 230 year experiment as a representative republic? (And not to forget the other “private organizations” that is are involved in this process: media companies).
While I share the view of many that our founders were wise in the many ways they created checks and balances in the system. They absolutely failed at addressing how our elections and the political system should work. (And never mind their 3/5th FUBAR).
So thanks to the founders, we’ve been left with a public-interest process–electing our leaders–that is determined by ad hoc private groups that act in their self-interests rather than the public interest. And we’ve all bought into it. Sure the primary and caucus systems are calcified. There are only two paths we can take, one is a “controlled burn” of trying to transition from an obsolete system into one that addresses the times we live in. Or, we ignore the problems until they become totally unacceptable and the system collapses, chaos ensues and from the rubble something new sprouts.
Unfortunately, my experience with human nature points to the latter occurring. I think the GOP is a couple of steps ahead of the Dems in that process, but we live in the same glass house they do.
Christopher says
I’m pretty sure every state has a method for getting on the ballot besides being the nominee of a major party.