Heres a City Weekly article, which is both amusing and educational, about Utahs present system for nominating candidates, as well as efforts to reform it. As for my perspective about such matters... Utahns presently enjoy a hybrid caucus/primary system in which, every two years, grassroots Utahns meet in precinct caucuses to elect their partisan delegates, who scrutinize their respective partys candidates and then, during an annual convention, gradually eliminate candidates until only two remain for each office. If one of these top two receives their overwhelming support, then he/she is nominated; otherwise, grassroots voters decide between these top two by majority vote during a primary election. Some statist Utahns, who dislike how (for example) Utahn Republicans booted moderate Bob Bennett for Constitutionalist Mike Lee in 2010, are seeking to change this hybrid system so that ONLY grassroots voters in primary elections, NOT precinct delegates in convention, choose partisan nominees. And they have commenced a Count My Vote initiative, funded by a few large donations, to collect signatures to place this question on next years general election ballot. Utah has experimented with such a primary-only system before, which reduced participation and yielded other negative results---such a system renders nominations more subject to both wealthy corrupt special interests and biased journalists, which is precisely what some modern political collectivists want, and it also suffers from the spoiler effect in which a partys candidates may win nomination without majority support. My fellow Utahns, lets please choose to uphold a time-tested effective system, rather than to repeat our past mistakes.
Posted on: Thu, 31 Oct 2013 03:51:59 +0000
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