The Presidential Primary System is Broken and Needs to Be Fixed

On November 8th of 2006, the day after the mid-term elections were held and two full years before the next Presidential Election, Tom Vilsack, former Governor of Iowa, announced his candidacy for the Presidency. This marked the official beginning to the next election cycle. Needless to say, numerous other candidates followed suit and began campaigning in earnest. The reason for this early start is the fact that states have been moving up their primaries so early that it has forced candidates to campaign for two years before the general election. For example, by February 6th 2008, over half of the states will have held their primaries or caucuses. This front loading of primaries is a major concern and it needs to be fixed.

In order to understand the largeness of the problem, we must first look to a little bit of history regarding the presidential primaries. The Presidential Primary system has changed throughout the years. The primary system essentially began with the Republican primary race between then sitting President Taft and former President Theodore Roosevelt in 1912. Primaries continued to evolve because of various events, discussed in detail at Wikipedia. Essentially, we have reached a point where states that are near the front of the election process wield a great deal of influence upon who is selected as a presidential candidate while those states who wait are basically forgotten.