Elections: A Tough Game in America

The idea came from the West, from the frontier men who were disgusted by the smoky rooms of the “bosses” who would negotiate, between cigars and whiskey, the name of the candidate for the presidency of the United States. A century ago, in 1910, Oregon was the first American state to organize party elections to choose who they wished to appoint to the White House by voting, and the first to name the process “primary elections.” And yet the idea, understandably disliked by the lords of the cigars, took another 58 years, tears and true blood, spilled in Chicago during the atrocious Democratic Convention of 1968, to spread.

In 1968, only 12 out of 50 states held primary elections or spontaneous assemblies of citizens called to caucus to pick their bishop. The story of primary elections in the nation that invented them is tug-of-war story between supporters of the people’s vote and bureaucrats of the party to decide whom to give the investiture in Congress. It’s a tough and very serious game in which candidates’ tricks to tilt primary elections in their favor, popular participation and the often decisive role of the media are all mixed together (the media sometimes believe that understanding the tricks of the parties is the object of the game, without always realizing that they themselves are a part of it).

This complexity was understood and perfectly exploited by a few, like Jimmy Carter in the primary Democratic elections of 1976, Ronald Reagan on the Republican ticket in 1980 and, most of all, Barack Obama last year. There’s not a unique or national law that states how, where and when party elections have to be organized. National executive committees decide arbitrarily, often changing from one electoral cycle to the next who can participate and how the delegates for the primary elections (where you don’t vote for a person, but for the representatives to send to the convention) have to be counted. Therefore, there are “closed” primary elections, reserved for citizens who have signed up on the lists of one of the major parties. There are also “open” primaries where everybody can vote, maybe just to rearrange the cards of the others, like what happened with the Republican vote that went to Hillary Clinton to trip up Obama.

Spontaneous assemblies or caucuses take place as well, like the very important one in Iowa, an insignificant state from an electoral point of view, but always the first to indicate preferences that the media will emphasize simply because they are the first. The race to be the first to vote gets dirtier and more erroneous from one election to the next because the advantage offered by a quick start, from the communicative and financial point of view, is enormous. Electoral funds run out quickly if your horse lags a few moments behind.

Far from being a perfect system, primaries remain a very bad method of selection, but still better than the others, just as Churchill said when speaking of democracy. Not more than 15 percent of electors on average usually participate, and that’s why the lords of the cigars try to create correctives for the major risk of primary elections. The involvement of only the most radical fringes of the electorate, which can be just enough to push a “niche” candidate in, also guarantees later defeat in the final duel with the opposite candidate, because the duel is always decided by the fluctuating electorate, moderate and uncertain. That’s why people have always said that American elections are a contest that begin from the extreme poles of the primaries and then, once you’ve won the nominees, turns into a race to be the first to catch the ball in the middle. They are confused, ferocious and often incoherent because they are democratic.