Why couldn't all primaries be held on the SAME DAY?

Is there some kind of law I'm not aware of? Imagine how far that would go toward keeping us from sniping at each other. We could have our nominee in a single day and get on with the business of kicking repugnant ass.

Primary on first Tuesday in June. For all 50 states and territories.

by giving them an equal number of delegates.

It doesn't have to work like the GE.

It's absurd that Wyoming (pop. 500,000) should have the same say as California (pop. 35,000,000) -- just as it's absurd that every state gets two US senators.

after a couple of primaries, the bandwagon effect kicks in, and it's all decided be a few little states.

But I'm sure they'll have a good reason. Whoever they is.

In the old days there was talk of four or five 'regional' primaries. Also an improvement over the current chaos.

Never came to be.

mentioned on here recently that some members of the party have been floating the idea of four regional primaries, to be held over a two month period I think it was. The order would rotate. I think that is a good idea. It would give the candidates a chance to campaign in each area, while limiting the time and money spent.

I don't like the idea of one national primary, because they would just spend all their time in the most populous areas, and we wouldn't have much time to see how they are at running a campaign, a pretty good indicator of how they are as administrators.

a lesser-known, lesser-funded candidate to compete. They can't do on-the-ground retail politics and pick up steam. It would go only to whomever could afford the most ads. Candidates would run the campaign from an office in DC.

The primary layout plays into the media coverage.

Might as well just hold an auction on EBay to sell the nomination to the highest bidder.

What the entry points of Iowa and New Hampshire do is allow candidates to get in the race with not a lot of cash (comparitively). This is a good thing, absent comprehensive public funding, fairness doctrine, etc.

That said, there is no reason why the season could not be compressed into a series of 'super tuesdays' after NH and Iowa, and there is no reason why New Hampshire and Iowa could not rotate 'first in the nation' status with other small primary and caucus states.

That would have meant it would be Romney or Guiliani v. Bloomberg this year.

forum for all major candidates would be presented.

Take a look at Britain and Canada to see how politics ought to work.

The candidate with the most money would win. No more retail politics, no up-close campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire for a year, allowing voters to get a real look at our candidates.

The entire thing would be about the ten most populated states, with the other 40 just shrugging and flipping over to American Idol.

Sorry if you find that humorous, but I'll bet the voters of Iowa, Kansas, Tennessee, Oregon, et al wouldn't appreciate the TV/Big Money campaign the One-Day Primary would bring.

Think about a General Election, where all 50 states vote in one day. Think about what's on your television 24/7, starting approximately the day after Labor Day.

I thought we were trying to remove the influence of corporate money in our elections.

.

A national primary day would ensure that candidates would only campaign in the same handful of states perennially and that smaller states would have their interests completely ignored.

Also, only the candidates with huge warchests would be able to compete at that level--we'd have only corporate candidates if we went that way.

Even worse, the media would have vastly more control over the campaigns and messages. Very bad.

So I'm going to disagree on this one.

...would give far too large an advantage to the candidate with the pre-primary buzz and largest war chest. Might as well just let the media coronate a winner in that case.

If your idea were reality, in 2004 we would have been dealing with Lieberman vs Bush, and Clinton vs whoever the hell those other guys went with...

The first, as many have already stated in this thread, is that it would give an overwhelming advantage to the candidates with the most initial name recognition and that had all the money.

The second is that you would in fact not have a nominee in a single day, in fact it would almost guarantee a convention fight every time. With no weeding out period, all the candidates would be viable on the single national primary date. Most likely no candidate would be able to get 50% of the delegates, in fact no one would probably get enough to have 50% even if all superdelegates got behind the leader. In the end the candidates would have to form coalitions to some extent so someone could get the nomination. This moves the coalition forming from the voters to the candidates compared to the current system, and to me that is a serious disadvantage.

The US, because of size and diversity, cannot be addressed all at once as in some countries. France, by contrast, in more densely populated, and seven public channels (not networks) reach all of them. It's also possible to reach all parts of the country in less than five and a half hours by train from Paris.

Also, the two-party system mitigates against a short selection process. Within elections, the role of the party is to foster competition without fragmenting the party members. The primary calendar is designed so that small states, that represent a segment of the party membership, get their say first as sort of a foretaste as to what the rest would do. This system avoids polarization, certainly a problem in this extended primary season. By contrast, France has no primaries. Their are two rounds of voting. All the parties submit candidates (a dozen in the last election) for the first round. If no 50%+ majority is won by any candidate, the top two candidates go on to another round.

I can't speak to what is done in France, but IIRC under most parliamentary systems you don't have primaries because the candidates are slated by the national parties. Here in NZ, the party bosses decide who will run.

In the event that anyone really cares what such a system would lead to, I'd suggest 'No Left Turn' by Chris Trotter. It lays out the destruction of true progressivism on the left in NZ because of back-room dealings, plain old fashioned egoism, centrist-election strategies, and fragmentation of the left into left and center-left. Today in NZ, there are three major left parties--Labour, Progressive, and Green parties. I'm sure a similar history of the Labour Party in England has been written too--I can't imagine that anything other than the same would have labeled Tony Blair 'left of center'.

Which is not to say there's nothing wrong with our system. I'm from New Hampshire and I would support regional primaries--but good luck selling that to most of the rest of the state.

That's exactly what would happen. Then the delegates would be free to choose the party's nominee at the Convention. Having them all on the same day will ensure that the American people don't get to choose the nominee.

..why using the elections in MI(even if Obama was on the ballot) and FL as is, is an afront to election principles. With campaigning not allowed there is an inherent advantage to the candidate with name recognition/incumbence.
People like Putin and Mugabe can give a few pointers on how that, or a good approximation of it, has been succesful before.

It would base the primary almost entirely on name recognition. Plus practical aspects of campaigning, if you weight it for equality for the states, our Huge Electoral college advantage from (eg) California is disrespected, if you do not, then The candidates will be forced to campaign in Cali, Texas, and NY, skipping many states.

There is no perfect Primary system.

There is great value in having the primaries spread out over several months. It's intended to be a marathon, where the successful candidates have to trot all over the nation meeting and greeting.

A single day primary would favor the name ID candidates, and those with lots of money.

Not a democratic idea.

and I don't see why not.

Whether it is a set rotation by cycle (perhaps divided by region), or a smallest to largest schedule that ensure even someone who bombs in NH isn't suddenly out of the race.