(04-14-2022, 10:44 AM)The Real Marty Wrote:

(04-13-2022, 09:33 PM)Lucky2Last Wrote: I'm open to other voting methods, especially in the primaries. I am not open to changing our federal electoral system. Here's a compromise. Party primaries get standardized rules that binds their convention to choose the party winner as decided by the people. Primaries adopt a ranked choice style. Candidates are ranked and the person with the most votes wins. For the national election, we follow the constitution and use only the nominees from parties that are recognized in at least 3/4s of the states. That seems simple enough.

But does the government actually have a constitutional right to regulate how political parties choose their candidates?  Here is an interesting article on the subject, dealing with state regulation of political parties.  I'm not sure if the federal government has that right, though.  

https://www.cga.ct.gov/2013/rpt/2013-R-0...20imposed.

By the way, if the Republicans had had ranked choice voting, I don't think Trump would have gotten the nomination in 2016.

The Federal government (US Congress) has broad constitutional authority to change many aspects of the nominating and election process for US house and US senate.  The Federal government could require open primaries, no primaries, multi-seat districts and many other things for those races.

The Federal government (here I mean Congress and the Courts) has very little power to alter election procedures for President or for state legislators. Those are handled at the state level mostly.

As for the Presidential primaries, they are basically unregulatable.  The states set up their own primary elections, but the national parties are free to ignore those election results and even their own rules as they settle on a nominee.  The states are then each free to ignore that choice and place and place other nominees from that party on the ballot if their law allows for it.  The amount of unwritten rules, goodwill, and tradition that is baked into the current nominating system boggles the mind.  

To the point, I agree with Marty that Trump would not have won the 2016 nomination under most other sets of rules.  Florida's primary in particular was decisive.  The state legislature determined that it should be on a certain day early in the national process, with only registered republicans voting.  Then the state party, RPOF, determined it should be winner-take-all.  The legislature and the party then agreed, without discussion, that the voters should be allowed to pick one candidate only.  There was no discussion because "we've always done it this way" but the truth is, if RPOF had requested that ballots with multiple candidates selected be counted, the legislature and supervisors of elections would have gladly obliged.  Ranked choice is a bigger ask because that's more than just checking a box, but approval voting could have been done.  If any of the players had made different choices on these issues, Trump may not have won.

Republican party rules for presidential nominations are conducive to giving voters more choices.  The delegates are typically winner take all by state or winner take all by congressional district.  Approval voting and ranked choice voting are both good at picking a single winner.  If one state wants to change its nominating process, they have a lot of latitude under GOP rules.

Democratic party rules for presidential nominations are much more problematic.  For them, delegates are always pledged proportionally to the statewide results.  It becomes very difficult to figure out how do assign delegates if each voter might have picked or ranked multiple candidates.

And it would be odd, and seem unfair and illegitimate, if in the 2024 primaries Republican party voters got to pick or rank multiple candidates while Democratic party voters were still under "choose one" rules.

I think we have major deficiencies in how we select candidates for all offices, but focusing on presidential nominations in particular, an interstate compact seems like the only plausible way for state governments to force the national parties to change their process.

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