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Joe Biden wins primary election in New Hampshire despite not even being on the ballot
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Dean Phillips got right around 20% even with the fact that Biden did a write in. I'm honestly kinda surprised it's that low. I would have expected there to be more than that considering the write-in.
Not that it matters since the DNC took away New Hampshire's say in the matter by nullifying their delegates. It is kinda horrifying that a private organization (the DNC) can just decide who has a say in choosing which candidates of the 2 we get to choose between.
DNC doesn't need to even have primaries. The political parties aren't public organizations. If another candidate was more popular, they foundy still win.
Besides, NH could have had a primary if they obeyed the rules. But they wanted to stay super special important so they were disqualified.
NH literally had to break either their own state law to move the primary, or break DNC's rules to have a primary that counted. And their republican state legislature would not allow them to move the primary. So they literally had no choice in the matter.
How is it in any way fair that 2 private organizations get to decide if the American people even get a say in the 2 (realistic) choices they have?
P.S. I'm assuming you mean might where you put 'foundy'. I don't know how that got there but I'm guessing a phone keyboard.
The problem here is the state law having any say in an intra-party election. That shouldn't be a thing.
Then run it on private property with private workers.
In what way is it unreasonable for a state to set rules for a private organization? Especially one with a huge say in determining who gets into public office.
If a state passes a law saying "All ice cream must be free." don't be surprised if all ice cream producers refuse to do business in the state, leaving the people there with no ice cream. Some rules are just stupid and the legislature needs to be cognizant of the consequences. They brought it upon themselves.
Sure you could easily argue that NH rules that they be first is stupid. And I agree with that, but it is also a bad look to take away that state's say in the process for that reason. If your state political party said your votes don't count and we are ignoring them, wouldn't you get kind of perturbed? The people of NH have little to no say in what their legislature does. It's not really fair to them that their primary votes don't count because the DNC said so.
I wouldn't be perturbed at Ben & Jerry's for avoiding the state lol. I'd be perturbed at the people we elected to write those laws.
It's stupid that primaries aren't all on the same day. People would have a problem with a staggered general election, so why do the primaries get a pass?
Agree 100%.
It also effectively disenfranchises an awful lot of primary voters. If you are in One of the first handful of states, you probably get a full slate of candidates. But if you're in one of the last handful, most of them have already dropped out and you probably won't have the opportunity to support the one you wanted.
Making all primaries on the same day would effectively address that. I would prefer however to remove primaries entirely. Set a slightly higher bar to getting on the main ballot, but then say any candidate regardless of party who gets enough signatures can be on the final ballot. Then do ranked choice voting. That way you can vote for a lesser known candidate, without losing your abilities to support the more likely winner that you like and thus not losing your vote against the other guy.
The problem is your voting system, not that the parties control their own internal processes. Implement something that makes sense like ranked choice voting and these nomination shenanigans will barely matter, and you'll be able to support more than 2 national parties. Most smaller countries have a lot more parties in their government.
Why not both? But your right only having 2 functional parties gives them a quite a bit of leeway. Since you only have 1 (or maybe 2) other choices, you functionally have no choice.
It's 'fair' because you just accept that they're the only realistic choices and just sit there and take it. Americans did this to themselves. They do it to themselves again every election cycle.
But more than 80% of the Americans have little to no say in how the government works. There's a Princeton study that 90%+ of Americans have little or no impact on US Policy. It's very much a cop out to blame Americans at large because it minimizes the harsh fact that money and the people who use it are what influences our system.
The ruling party should have primaries every election. The person in the office isn't always who the people want to keep that position.
But the other potential candidates all died of old age, they're running out of boomers to elect!
the USA isn't really supposed to have political parties like you do now.
Washington and other "founding fathers" argued against a party system, and there are no references to parties in the Constitution or other original documents mandating how elections are conducted.
The reality is that in any other country a private organization (=a party committee) decides who is the candidate for their party, and therefore who the public can vote for
It's always been the way. Even if the plebs vote for someone not approved by the party (ie Bernie), they have super delegates that get to outvote the others to promote their choice.
You can run as an independent or make your own party if you want to.
You know that's only technically correct and not viable in practice
The sad thing is you're technically correct only because it's people with a similar mindset to you on the matter that perpetuate this idea.
No, it's technically correct because the math just doesn't work in favor of third parties. That can change, but you have to put in a lot more effort than just voting at every opportunity.
The point was, the only reason only two parties exist in this country has less to do with any mechanical reason why and more to do with the fact that a huge number of people, such as yourself, continue cementing into people's minds that any alternative choice is worthless. Effectively, by continuing to perpetuate this idea over and over again in peoples minds, you have effectively created a self fulfilling prophecy.
You are technically, right. A third option has little to no chance, but only because people, such as yourself, have continued to tell others that a third options had little to no chance.
The main reason is the first past the post voting system that heavily favors two party systems, mathematically.
Sure you can, but what you can do is irrelevant. Even if you do it is guaranteed not to have a say nationally because of our first past the post voting system locks out any competition. You have 2 meaningful choices, anything else is locked out by our voting system and rendered non meaningful.
With the right candidate you could trick both major parties into secretly funding them as a spoiler candidate for the other party. You just need to say things that make headlines that people will engage with and come up with three word zingers that people will chant. Just say ambiguous shit and people will interpret it however they want to. There's people winning elections as libertarians, so it's totally possible with a more appealing platform.