I'm with Jesse and Kari on this one. Having worked in the Iowa Caucus in 2004 for John Kerry, I understand the benefits to voters and the community. I'm enthralled by stories of campaigns gone by, like '68, when my older friends talk about how Bobby Kennedy visited Canby High School or getting a chance to see him at Mo's in Newport. Now that's campaigning, having to go out and talk to people, shake their hands, take the time to talk to voters, not simply come to town and hold a huge rally and a fundraiser and head on to the next state.

We could actually have a debate if we got really into it. Imagine people all over the country watching a debate happening in Oregon. The town that I was stationed in Iowa was probably around 30,000 in population. In one week, this town saw every single candidate or a surrogate for a candidate come in. If they can do it, so can we. It's not like we'd have to wait in lines at the polls.

What troubles me about this list is: NO WESTERN STATES. The West has been hearalded as a bastion of conservativism by the Right, but in reality it is more left and independant (as seen in the last election results). I used the small "l" purposely here, but nevertheless, this should be primary hunting ground, not states such as Iowa. And California? Well... they could be a "national" election primary all to themselves.

Oregon is a great choice, but I also would be happy with Washington being up there too. What about Colorado?

It is amazing that the first of these primaries is less than a year away.

"The 2008 Presidential election will be the most wide-open in 80 years, marking the first campaign without a sitting President or Vice-President since 1928."

I have heard this often said in the news, but it is incorrect. In the 1952 presidential election neither Dwight Eisenhower nor Adlai Stevenson were a siting president or vice president.

Of course, if the primaries are close, it will put Oregon in the position of deciding a primary and thus increase the attention placed on Oregon.

Like the idea; let's do it!

Correction to Dave: in 1952 the "sitting VP," Alben Barclay, was a candidate for the D nomination. Another example of excellent research by Kari and Jesse.

Is it really necessary to point out the obvious? Every state wants to be the earliest to increase its clout. The "logic" of this dynamic means primary dates get moved up and up and up....Gee, why don't we have the 2008 primary in 2007 and really get a head start?

I'm all for it. What do we need to do to make this happen?

Okay, here are a couple problems with the idea. Perhaps we could get some comments:

1. The counties are facing big (even devastating for some) hits in federal revenues this year. How would they find the extra money to put on an additional election?

2. Some people are attracted to the primary by the presence of presidential candidates. Would participation in the May primary suffer, thereby sapping local democracy's strength?

At least as important as when our primary is: understanding the whole delegate selection process.

That hasn't been necessary for the past few decades, but in 1984 it was very important. That was the year the insurgent candidates got something like 2/3 of the vote and the candidate of the party establishment (county, district, state party people, some elected officials) got the rest of the vote. In that situation, understanding the rules really matters:

*timeline? delegate selection held as a sep. meeting or part of district and state central comm. meetings? logistics for the process (incl. voting delegates allowed to choose only one presidential caucus instead of going from caucus to caucus as voting goes on to avoid mischief)

*must one still be an elected pct. person to vote on delegates? can any registered Dem. run for delegate if they submit an application on time? where does one submit an application and what is the deadline?

*are the delegate selection rules at the national level printed yet? are there printed state rules? To have a Feb. presidential primary, people devoted to a candidate should start thinking about the logistics of winning a Feb. primary and then getting their delegates elected (as I recall, there are lots of sub-categories and no one knows how many delegate slots will be available to a campaign until after the primary--in some states there has been a surprise winner and not enough people applied to fill the slots)sometime between mid-summer and Thanksgiving. Whether anyone from the national campaign would be sent to Oregon exactly a year from now give or take a few weeks, or if it would be a totally local operation, would be another thing to think about.

*whatever happened to a paragraph in the rules titled "presidential candidate right of approval"? Basically the question is whether anyone can run for delegate (meaning the most well known have the best chance of winning) or whether the presidential campaign (at the national level with local input) can decide to follow a set of rules which can allow them to choose activists who may never have been in politics before---providing they have enough people submit applications to be delegate and follow certain other rules.

*what are the rules for non-committed delegates and "superdelegates" (elected official/party leader)?

Delegate selection rules are the definition of arcane, but in a wide open race they can make a real difference. I know so much about how they were once written because I was a 1984 delegate and part of the process of rewriting the rules in the period 1984-88. My interests were in having the rules in plain English (to the extent that is possible) and one particular paragraph. Lots of volunteer hours by lots of people went into writing those rules at all levels.

As I recall, the current criteria for being on the Oregon presidential ballot is something like the Sec. of State determining their viability. How would that be determined in late 2007 (surely when the decision would have to be made for a Feb. primary)---money? poll rankings?

A presidential primary should stand on its own--why should candidates for other offices be slogging thru what might be the weather we have endured this week just to run in a legislative or statewide primary?

Some states have to be at or near the tail end. That's the way it is. As for front-loading, the problem there is that someone could get nominated before any or enough bad things about him could be exposed.

Bob Tiernan

Best idea I've heard for a long time. What practical steps can we take to help make it a reality?

Let's have the primary on Xmas Day 2007 and really get the drop on the rest of the country, especially the Bible Belt. I mean, this is the Great State of the Unchurched.

We should definitely move up all primaries so that the candidates are selected by the beginning of 2008. This will then allow 10+ months for a stupendously expensive general election campaign, providing more time than ever for attack ads, swift-boating, ad nauseum, thereby alienating as many voters as possible and keeping down turnout in November to the True Believers. This approach will provide the punditocracy increased opportunities to perform election post mortems to bemoan the unhealthy state of our political system and call for campaign-finance reform.

Has anyone heard of the tragedy of the commons?

Mr. Forsyth--your reply is about as perfect a demonstration of what I meant by tragedy of the commons

as I can think of. Thanks!

Why not get a bill introduced that incorporates Kari's idea on rotating the selection regionally? That is, sub-(a) says Oregon's presidential primary is now the first Tuesday in February, sub-(b) says that sub-(a) will become inoperative once the national parties adopt a regional system. That sort of thing would put Oregon at the front of real reform.

While we're at it --and I know this is off-topic -- shouldn't we do away with "Superdelegates"?? If they want to hand out nonvoting seats to party elders, great. It'd be nice to see the Democratic Party attempt to be democratic for a change.

John

require some sort of participation in the party for at least a large chunk of the positions, Jenni, Hotly contested primaries (as 1984 was) can bring people into their first campaign ever (as I'm sure Dean did) while people who are very involved in the party may end up backing an "establishment" candidate which can come in a distant second place. Delegates (last time I heard) go proportionally to candidates dep. on how well they do in the primary.

I'll let Wayne K. explain if it is still in the rules, but "presidential candidate right of selection" in delegate selection rules is a mechanism for the winning presidential candidate (assuming enough people file and the rules are followed) to make a decision at the national level saying the campaign (in practice meaning the state/local campaign) has a say in who runs for delegate, thus making it easier for people active in the campaign but not well known to the party to have a chance to be elected delegate.

Ron Wyden, Earl B. David Wu, Barbara Roberts, Rod Monroe were delegates I knew when I was a 1984 delegate. I'm just not sure how many people who entered Oregon politics in the last decade and a half can imagine what a truly contested Oregon primary is like---and given the delegate bonus for later primaries, it could be hotly contested whenever the primary is scheduled--call me a dreamer if you like.

Jenni, I think what you are talking about is super delegates, elected officials, and "party leader" slots. The latter went to everything from state officers not already going, to district chairs, county chairs, etc. As I recall, if there are more delegate slots than people holding party office filed for X candidate in the party leader category, "party leader" can extend all the way down to elected pct. people.

This is why it is important to read and understand delegate selection rules once published, and it sounds like Wayne K. understands the current process as well as anyone.

But here is the problem: At least when I was involved, applications for delegate had to be submitted before the primary. Then if all the old time party people back someone (for sake of argument, say Hillary Clinton) and either Obama or Edwards wins the primary, there is a certain number of delegates going to Clinton as long as she got the threshold (15% in my day) and the rest of the delegates to the winner and maybe 2nd place if she was 3rd. So, if you as a party activist signed up for a candidate who lost (like Mondale delegate candidates in 1984) you'd be competing with other people who chose the same candidate.

This is an old argument--Mondale people who had to compete against each other and sometimes got alternate slots because there just weren't enough delegate slots for all of them sounded really offended that they didn't all become delegates. But their candidate didn't win, so they didn't get as many slots. That's what "to be a delegate you have to understand the rules and also back the right horse" means.

There have been cases in history where the upset winner of a primary qualified for maybe 12 delegates and only 12 people had signed up to be delegates for that person, so they all 12 became delegates.

In a contested convention (and it could happen again if all the stars aligned), the presidential candidates want delegates who care first about their campaign, their platform positions, their views on rules if it comes to that. That is why some campaigns want to reward the person who spent all their free time for months over someone who is well known in the local party but didn't lift a finger (or campaigned for another candidate).

What is "bullet voting"? Never heard that term before--but then it has been over a decade since I had anything to do with delegate selection.

Jenni, You have just explained the problems with complex voting systems, which is why some people don't jump on the IRV / fusion voting, etc. bandwagons without asking lots of questions.

When I ran for delegate, I'd held a local title (unpaid but with a title) in the presidential campaign. I'd come very close to being elected a delegate at the district level, and several friends formed a committee to help me win at the state level (luckily I had filed at both levels). I worked hard to be elected by doing things like calling all voting state delegates across the state supporting our candidate. I was too concentrated on my own race to know if people played games like you describe with other committed delegates, although the "uncommitted" delegates did end up getting chosen by the majority elected to the state convention representing the winning candidate.

Given that M B Cahill ran the Kerry campaign, I wonder exactly how much of a role the national campaign had in 2004 Oregon delegate selection (MBC once ran an Oregon campaign which was not well managed).

Here is what else my friends and I did to get me elected in 1984: In the days before desktop publishing, it turned out one supporter worked in a copy place and helped design both fliers to give people and stickers for my supporters to wear. We had a campaign committee of sorts (aka several friends helping), a speech writing committee which spent a couple hours with me perfecting a 2 minute speech, people at the convention giving out fliers and stickers. When I got to state convention, it appeared half the delegates were wearing the stickers, and when I was interrupted by applause I guessed I would probably win and I was right.

If you don't like "bullet voting", talk to Wayne K. off the blog and ask if it can be prohibited by the state rules.

But the bottom line is this: it isn't about who helps the party, as by definition a contested nomination splits the party. It is about who helps the presidential campaign. In my case I was asked to run for delegate by local leadership. I spent much of my spare time during the primary in the local campaign office, was local volunteer coordinator and the person charged with understanding the rules so I could explain them to everyone else.

Jenni, if you really want to be a 2008 delegate, I'd suggest you decide which candidate you support by sometime in 2007. Then when there begin to be Oregon operations for that candidate (or if you want to help start the Oregon campaign yourself) that you get in on the ground floor, and be well known to the local campaign.

With regard to

"I'm talking about people who get a large number of people signed up as voting members at the state convention for the expressed purpose of getting certain people elected.",

our local campaign didn't get off the ground in Oregon until Super Tuesday when a family friend of the candidate who lived in Oregon had a local organizing event. From then until the primary, we had weekly local meetings and a campaign office in donated space. Not sure what you mean by "signed up as voting members at the state convention for the expressed purpose of getting certain people elected"---in 1984 only elected pct. people could vote for delegate, so we had to run write in campaigns for pct. person. It is totally within the rules as I knew them to run for pct. person for the express purpose of being part of the delegate selection process.

Sorry if that bothers you, but historically that sort of activity is what brings new blood into party politics. We newly elected pct. people had an effect on reorganization after the election, but I can't see how that is breaking the rules. I was elected to State and Dist. Central Comm. by people I had met on the campaign.

Things may have been diff. in 2004, I don't know. I would suggest talking with folks who remember previous delegate selection, and talking to those like Wayne K. (and who is the current chair of State Rules?) and learning more about how the process is supposed to run. Details matter.

Jenni---talk to Wayne K and the chair of State Rules off the blog and learn about the process as it is planned to be done for 2008. From what Wayne said, maybe it is not too late to change the 2008 rules. Rules are written way in advance and people who have studied the rules don't want to see them changed at the last minute. I would have been really ticked, having spent so much time studying the rules and explaining them to others, if someone had tried to change the rules at the 1984 state campaign. If you want everyone to vote for as many candidates are there are slots, pass a rule saying ballots with not all the blanks filled out won't be counted, or something. That's what rules committees are all about.

As far as

"If I remember correctly, any registered dem can sign up to be a voting delegate at the state convention. That means you can get a big group of people together, get them all signed up, and then use their votes to ensure you are elected a delegate."

I'd nail that down now. Either any registered Dem. could be a voting delegate at the CD level, (when did that happen? used to have to be pct. people) or one has to be a pct. person at the CD level.

When I ran for delegate, the CD elected the state convention delegates, and people who wanted to run both at the CD and state level had to file that way before the primary. Either that is still the way it is, or it has changed, but either way the people to ask are those who understand how the rules are written--not other people on a blog.

As far as "geographic diversity" is concerned, our CD (5th) had delegates from the Salem area and from Linn County, and other CDs contributed people from the Portland metro area, from Eugene, and from Bend and S. Oregon. That should be the job of the presidential campaign to find such people, not the job of the DPO which should be neutral in such a primary.

Woops--what I meant was "the 1984 state convention".

I'm not enthused about this. I remember in '96 when we had an early primary a couple of weeks after New Hampshire, with the ballots mailed out right after New Hampshire. Bob DOle campaigned here for a day, while Buchanan, Forbes, Alexander, and the others totally ignored Oregon. This is what happens to states when they jump into the front loaded traffic jam of primaries/caucuses. In '88, the Southern states joined together for a massive "Super Tuesday", and candidates were reduced to briefly touching down at airports in the different states, with no real presence in any state.

When there has been any competitive race at all by May, Oregon has received more candidate time than the early states, especially when you look at the time/money spent per voter. I can remember in '84 when Gary Hart campaigned throughout Oregon for three or four days, even rafting the Deschutes. Jesse Jackson spent even more time in '88 ( I went his huge rally in Redmond) and Dukakis spent a couple of days here. Clinton and Brown both spent several days here in '92 and ran TV ads. If Oregon moves up, we will be ignored in favor of the South, NY, IL, OH, etc...

Also, states that have moved ahead in the past haven't influenced the process. South Dakota moved up to a week after NH in '88, and their voters picked Bob Dole and Dick Geopahrdt, as well as Bobby Kerrey in '92. All of them bit the dust int he states that followed.

One other problem with the idea. The early primary will be only for presidential candidates. We almost surely will keep the May primary for state/local candidates, as we did in '96, which will result in a lower turnout local primary. The state will also then have to pay for two primary elections.

Jesse,

Are you positive that the voter turnout figure for the 1996 primary (66%) is correct? If that number is correct, it would certainly be a shocking one.

The Secretary of State's figures on the 1996 primary election show an overall turnout of 38%. Multnomah County's figures on turnout corroborates the state's data, and the turnout is even lower, at 33%.

If these numbers are correct, then there is more to the argument that an earlier presidential primary draws attention away from the May primary.

Or am I missing something?

I should add, however, that in spite of the evidence I've just posted, I still don't necessarily agree with the argument that holding more than one primary thins out participation.

38% participation in the non-presidential portion of the 1996 primary shouldn't be considered a terribly depressed figure, especially relative to other primary elections on which presidential candidates do not appear. (Turnout in the 1998 primary was in the low 30s, turnout in 2002 was around 46%) In a way, 38% participation on the non-presidential races in 1996 was somewhat normal.

Splitting the primary elections has the effect of not so much depressing turnout, but sacrificing the "turnout boost" that presidential candidates provide.

Maybe someone else has run these figures, but I'm curious about how much the listing of presidential candidates on a primary ballot gets people to vote on races in which they wouldn't otherwise choose to cast a vote?

It is time to stop the primary date "arms race". Of course, everyone thinks that they have a "god given" right to have disproportionate influence on the national agenda. Rather than spending the energy in an effort to cut to the front of the line, Oregon Democrats should lead the national discussion about general primary reform.

Five or six regional primaries (or caucuses at the discretion of the state) should be held between March and June. The dates for the initial primary slots should be determined by a random lottery. From that point forward, the dates would rotate so that each region would realize the advantage of an early presidential primary.

The current system is a zero sum game. Rather than try to game an unfair system to our advantage (to the detriment of citizens of other states), we should be working toward a process that provides a forum for regional issues, protects the interests of small states, and provides for equitable engagement in the candidate selection process for all citizens.

Dave Kaplan