2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: For 2020, the Democratic Party Should Take Back Its Nomination Methods [View all]Blue Meany
(1,947 posts)of making sure the counting is fraud-free in the primaries (livestreamed hand-counting, perhaps?).
I like the idea of groups of primaries, especially if each set has a sampling of states from different regions. Instead of early votes in all the southern states, we could have one from the South, one from New England, one from the midwest, one from the west coast, etc. And maybe there could be some rotation states from one election to the next, so that certain states don't have undue influence.
I don't agree with closed primaries, however. Open primaries, along with referendums and recalls, were introduced as progressive democratic reforms in the early 20th century and they remain more democratic than the alternatives. I think all parties should be required to have open primaries and that they should be held on the same day using the same ballots. I don't see why independents should be either disenfranchised in the primaries and/or taxed to support elections in which they are not allowed to vote.