OK, I am not a lawyer and I usually don’t delve into politics in my public life, as I view them to be personal, but I have lately been a bit agitated about my lack of voice in picking a presidential candidate and it got me wondering about the constitutionality of our current primary system.

That is, could someone, in say North Carolina or one of the other “late” primary states sue the Federal Election Commission and/or the Republican and Democrat parties for denying me my suffrage rights?  Is there a legal harm done by the fact that by the time I get to “vote” my candidate of choice has long exited the campaign trail?  I know, I can write them in, but c’mon, I’d have to be stupid to write someone in who is no longer interested in running.  Furthermore, even though these elections are just to elect the candidate of the major parties, they are often held in public polling places using publicly purchased (even federally subsidized) election equipment.  Additionally, when some of the later states threatened to move their primaries up, the two major parties threatened to punish those states for the sole crime of wanting to give their citizens a realistic say in a Federal Election.  I’ve got nothing against Iowa or New Hampshire or South Carolina, but I hardly think they should get to be the de facto selectors of our two main presidential candidates.

Wouldn’t it make more sense to have a series of runoff elections?  Say two or three?  Each candidate who is serious has to collect X number of signatures by a certain date, at which point they submit them to the FEC  for inclusion on the first runoff ballot, to be held in January of the year of the Election.  The top Y vote getters then make it to the next election, held in July and then the Z from that our on the election in November.  Naturally, since this is America, one can also write in whomever they want at any point in the process.   This way, candidates can still collect all of their bribes (I mean do all of their fundraising) and Joe Patriot gets to feel like he has a say in the election.  In fact, the TV Networks would love it, because it’s like “National Survivor” or some other reality show.

So, what do you think?  Is there a legal grounds for this?  Shouldn’t we all get to have a say in who our next president is?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 6th, 2008 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Democrats, Free Speech, Republicans, election, legal, politics, primaries, voting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.