Political Primaries

A political primary is a preliminary election in which the registered voters of a political party nominate candidates for office. The key word here is preliminary. The current system allows small states such as Iowa and New Hampshire {assisted by the media} to award front-runner status to the victorious candidate. From there the candidates travel a path determined by which states wants to "leap frog" the other by moving up their primary dates. Candidates are whisked across the country without any real ability to distinguish regional issues from national issues. Consequently, party platforms are determined by a make-it-up-as-you-go approach. If the primary process were organized on a regional basis, candidates would be able to study the regional issues, campaign to confirm those issues and then receive votes based on the solutions they propose. A regional approach would also prevent a premature selection of a front runner because success in one region certainly would not guarantee success in the next region. This would also further validate the process because each state would still have a say all the way down to the end. Finally, the number of delegates awarded in each state should be determined by the percentage of votes won by each candidate.

Accordingly, the political primaries should occur between January and June of each presidential election year. Each of the six regions would be assigned a particular month. A lottery held in June of the previous year would determine which month each region holds its primaries. An example illustrates the format:

January
Middle West (9):
Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Wisconsin

February
Southern (8):
Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia

March
Atlantic (8):
Delaware, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina,

April
New England (8):
Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont,

May
Northwestern (9):
Alaska, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Wyoming

June
Southwestern (9):
Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah

sounds pretty much a fair way of doing these things but having all representatives in government elected at one time could lead to sweeping changes as well as lost time as new people would tend to need time to get into the swing of how the political system works(who scratches whose back, etc)?

I thought individual state governments were supposed to take care of regional issues?

Voting in the primaries, I started to think about the process more. So I present an alternative, why not have a non-partasian party with the ability to vote for any parties candidate? Non-party voters being those who vote for whom they think are best qualified w/o party affilliation so a good party candidate could have greater clout within the party but may not be the best choice to the majority.

There are always biased opinions, if you are alive, the opinion is biased.

[quoteopinion is biased[/quote]Our present political system needs reform. yes, a biased opinion but is it not true?
Voter apathy, lack of concern or feeling they are not being represented anyway?