COLUMN: Count my vote: a way to modernize elections
One of the fundamental truths of American politics is that in order to get elected to public office, you must first win a party nomination. A political party must officially endorse you as their first and sole choice for the office. Then, once each political party has picked their nominee – set forth their “champion,” if you will – the two nominees race against each other in the general election to win the ultimate prize: the position in elected office.
It doesn’t matter which office we’re talking about. From the Utah Legislature to the U.S. Congress, all candidates have to go through the same laborious two-step process: first, the nominating process, where individuals within the same political party compete to win their party’s nomination, and second, the general election, where the official nominees from different political parties try to win more votes than their opponent in order to officially win the seat.
A recent illustration of this two-step process was Utah’s 2012 race for U.S. Senate. Orrin Hatch and Dan Liljenquist, both Republicans, ran against each other during the nominating process to win the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Hatch, of course, won the nomination. Around the same time, Scott Howell won the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Hatch and Howell, the Republican and Democratic nominees, then faced off in the general election. Hatch defeated Howell, winning another term in the Senate.
The reason I relate this mini-political science lecture is because most Americans have very little understanding of the nominating process. And sometimes, the nominating process – which determines who the candidates are in the general election – can be more important than the general election itself.
So how does the nominating process work? In most states, the political parties hold what’s called a primary election to determine nominations, which is an internal election where a party’s members vote for their favorite of several candidates vying for the nomination. The nomination is given to whichever candidate receives the most votes. It sounds simple.
Then there’s Utah.
In terms of modernity and simplicity, Utah’s nominating process is positively primitive. Rather than holding a simple primary election to determine which candidates advance to the general election, Utah still uses a caucus and convention system. This means voters in each party meet in precinct caucuses and elect delegates to progress to county caucuses, where delegates will be selected to advance to respective state party conventions, where complex rules stipulate a supermajority of delegates must vote for one candidate or else an automatic primary will be triggered. If you got lost in that last sentence, well, that’s rather my point.
Fortunately, a smart group of Utahns have gotten together and created the Count My Vote initiative: a straightforward, intuitive plan to transform Utah’s nominating process into a direct primary system. Under this plan, party nominations would be determined by the popular vote of the people in each political party, not on the vote of a removed, ideological cadre of delegates – representing less than 1 percent of Utah’s voting population – at state conventions. Count My Vote is the sensible, simple, long-overdue reform Utah needs to revitalize a healthy democracy.
– Briana is a senior majoring in political science and president of the USU Democrats. She is an avid road cyclist and a 2013 Truman Scholar. Comments can be sent to Briana at b.bowen@aggiemail.usu.edu.