A Primary Election for 2008

In a July 21, 2006 op-ed piece in Newsday, Joshua Spivak, an attorney and media consultant, made the point that the presidential primary elections are rigged against the Democrats. Iowa and New Hampshire, the two established early primaries, are to be joined by Nevada and South Carolina. These are all small states, and the voters of small states tend to favor Republicans more than Democrats.

But the big states, such as New York and California, tend to be Democratic states. By dealing the big states out of the primary process, the great bulk of Democratic voters are being ignored. In other words, the Democratic candidate the small states are likely to select is probably not the same candidate that the Large states would select. The reasoning behind picking small states is that it would be too difficult to hold a primary in a large state; the candidates would not have enough money to finance a primary race in a large state.

But the Internet might provide a better way to select a
Democratic candidate. Let MoveOn, for example, run a nationwide Democratic primary. If such a project is to be fair and effective, it will be necessary to make sure that only Democrats vote in the Democratic primary. One way to do tis would be to have every voter submit a notarized affidavit that he or she voted for John Kerry in the 2004 election or that he/she intends to vote for the Democratic candidate in the 2008 election.

Computers can be used to track the voters and make sure people don’t vote twice. Volunteers could probably handle the data entry problem once the system has been set up.

Did you know that Ken Rove said, in 2004, before the election: “The good news is that Dean is not the nominee.” Quoted by Bob Woodward in his book, “Plan of Attack”.