I say no, government should not be involved in primary elections. Aren't primaries party functions? Why should Iowa and New Hampshire, states with less black people than play in the NHL, get to go first all the time? Turns out I'm not the only one with this thought. There are other points in the blog post, so be sure to read it through.
My state and local governments are also holding elections which coincide with the party primary elections. We have statewide propositions and a local school board bond issue to vote on. Why not combine them and reduce any duplication of resources required to have separate elections for the statewide issues and the party primaries?
Yeah, I agree. The political parties are private entities, so lets privatize the elections. We would need an incentive, though, to get private venture capitalists involved in financing them. The primaries have to generate a profit. But how? Maybe we can charge admision. 50 bucks gets you the right to participate the Iowa Caucus. For 100 bucks you can vote in NH. And so on. Other revenue could come from sponsorships. We can have the candidates carry the logos of the sponsors, like Nascar drivers. Imagine. Wallmart, the low price leader, is proud to be a sponsor of the future president of the United States, Hillary Clinton. And, the States themselves could sell their names, like the college bowl games. For example, the Nebraska primary could become the Mutual of Omaha primary, and the Washington primary might become known as The Starbucks primary. And, why should every network cover the primaries? Lets sell the rights to the highest bidder. The possibilities are endless. Capitalism at its best.
I'll add a caveat. If the Republican or Democratic parties in a state want only their party members to vote for their candidates, and will not allow independents to vote, then the Republican and Democratic parties are more than welcome to pay for it by themselves.
Any chance this complete non-starter could be moved out of Elections into the political theory forum where it belongs?
Why have primaries? With X amount of signatures on a petition anyone can get a spot in the general election. Period. Then divide the Electoral College votes by Proportional Representation in each state,requiring 5% to get a share of the vote. If there is no majority,scrap the House of Representatives tie break voting,and have a two person runoff with Electoral college winner-take-all in each state voting.
That would be a start. No, there isn't, because as usual you're wrong. Is the Green Party entitled to have government pay for their elections? The Libertarians? The Facists? What about people who aren't in a party. Why should they have to pay for party activities? All this is is corporate welfare. The parties are perfectly capable of paying for primaries, caucuses, or whatever else they can think of on their own. It's not that difficult.
Well,let's just run them all through threshing machines then. An inital election followed by a runoff would do the same thing and not mean that the fate of the world would be determined by three states.