Last Sunday, news talk shows focused on what the Democrats should do about Florida and Michigan. A consensus seemed to be emerging that the Democratic party should pay to conduct a massive do-over primary by mail. Given the limited time available and the political obstacles to any other scheme, that’s probably not a bad idea. The DNC should pay the bill and just do it so this issue gets resolved instead of reminding people how idiotic it was of the Democrats to allow two huge, critical states to be marginalized to the point that Wyoming’s Democratic caucuses are more relevant than then “hanging chad” punchers of Florida or autoworkers in Detroit.
Does a massive postal mail election seem a bit 20th Century to anyone else? We have this incredible medium–the web–that could be leveraged in so many ways to address an issue like this. But first, we have to get past a lot of misconceptions, vested interests, and cross purposes…sadly, even before I could write this, I realized that is a huge uphill battle. But here is a skeleton idea anyway for a 21st century nominating process…
The goal of primary/caucus events is ultimately to elect a representative group of delegates to attend a nominating convention for the political party. It is not an election in the same way the general election is or how a “first round” primary works because voters are not really voting for the candidates–even in a primary state, the election is simply a poll that is used to apportion delegates who are elected by local party caucuses that no one knows about. The vote I cast for Barack Obama here in Massachusetts will be effected when a vote is cast by a delegate from Massachusetts at the DNC. Maybe.
The caucuses I participated in in Washington State in 1992 were a more direct affair. I attended a neighborhood precinct meeting at Stadium High School where all the North End of Tacoma precincts were meeting and convinced nearly a dozen friends and neighbors to go with me and support Paul Tsongas. Our precinct was entitled to elect 3 (I think) delegates to Legislative District caucuses. Based on our numbers, Tsongas got 2/3 of the delegates. I was elected. Then, at the 27th LD caucuse a few weeks later, we elected a group of about a dozen including myself–about 1/4 of the district–to go on to the Congressional District caucus a month or so later. At that caucus, we still had over 15% for Tsongas, so we we alloted 1 National Delegate–I lost that election, but then at the state convention, I was selected as an alternate.
When people talk about Internet voting, it is almost always in the context of a primary–the web-based or electronic ballot is just another way for random voters to cast their anonymous ballots. It is seen as a technical solution only. I think that is a bad idea, for all the obvious security reasons.
But consider what an internet caucus might look like:
Voters register online to identify themselves with the party of their choice. Then, they prepare for round one of caucusing by casting preliminary ballots and/or announcing their intention to run for delegate at the precinct level on a public website. Everything is open and public. There is no secret ballot and you can change your ballot up until the moment of the official caucus.
The caucus is conducted in two steps: First, the candidate preference selection is done on the night of the traditional primary. Then, neighborhood caucuses are held to elect delegates to the next level. This spawns another round of online debate and discussion and another two-step vote. The process continues as necessary until a group of national delegates is elected.
Throughout this exercise, the voting process is not simply tallying votes…it involves citizens logging on to websites that provide local discussion areas, links to social profiles, blogs, etc. The degree of real-world engagement and transparency is what would make such a process resistant to fraud. It would not be perfect…it could be a total mess of myspace pages, facebook profiles, endless twittering…you name it…but it would be so much more participatory than a single ballot cast in secret once every 4 years.
Now this is a rough sketch…and I can anticipate a million objections because such a system can’t just be thrust upon the current state of affairs…but the final kicker here is that I would anticipate such a system to be formed organically. The Democratic party is not going to hire software consultants to create such a system. Instead, what will happen is political social media networks will aggregate themselves over time to bring in more and more people until the movement is not just MoveOn.org or DailyKos, but a generalized political empowerment movement. There will be a point where a campaign is “one” with the voters–where the majority of people voting for a candidate have participated, through social media, in the actual campaign…and where all the different campaigns are in fact using the same tools and websites to debate and advocate…and voting becomes the final formality.
Way out there? Sleep deprivation? What the heck am I talking about? I think caucuses are often criticized from being insider affairs…but primaries are too anonymous and do not afford voters any opportunity to debate, discuss and engage with one another. I think emerging social media tools could, when combined with the face to face of local caucuses, provide transparency and openness to the caucus process and improve the opportunity of all citizens to participate in the nomination process.
It won’t solve the immediate problem of Florida and Michigan…but I think it is something to think about for the future…and if it truly is a good idea and can be made effective, perhaps we don’t need our current parties anymore…