A Proposal for a More Fair and Representative National Primary System

I apologize, everyone. I'm taking a break from writing about Atlanta today. On another note, have you ever felt that, given the lateness of Georgia's Presidential primary, it's not even worth the effort? Do you feel ignored by the national ballot-counters? I sure do.

(Beware, statistics ahead; also, simplified names of Census racial categories)

The mountains of coverage I've been reading about the various Presidential campaigns in Iowa has unsettled me, I believe rightfully so. Every Presidential candidate bums around Iowa for at least a month, because the voters of this state, along with New Hampshire, have more power in determining the election than any of the rest of us.

And why should they? In addition to being especially agrarian, Iowa is 91% white, and New Hampshire is 94%. These states, though certainly as important as any of the rest, are hardly representative of America as a whole.

At first, I thought a single national Presidential primary date would be an effective solution. It's been pointed out to me, however, that the new presence of super PACs, resulting from the Citizens United ruling, has raised the spectre of dramatically heightened corporate influence in such a national primary. I think I've come up with a compromise that would work well to increase national representation in the primaries, and simultaneously keep a tab on corporate campaign spending.

Ten randomly-chosen states will vote in the primaries on a given Tuesday, say, 31 May 2016. Then ten more will go next week, and so on until all states are accounted for in five weeks' time. The first ten would have to be non-bordering, in order to even out representation in the earliest primaries.

So, let's say that the ten states selected under this new system to go first, on 31 May 2016, were Connecticut, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, South Carolina, and South Dakota. The combined population of these states is ethnically distributed as follows:

White: 88.3%
Black: 16.3%
Asian: 5.8%
Native American: 1.4%
Pacific Islander: 0.5%
Other: 2.0%
Multiracial: 3.9%
Hispanic of any race: 14.7%

Or if they were Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, Kentucky, Michigan, Mississippi, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Texas:

White: 74.3%
Black: 12.1%
Asian: 3.2%
Native American: 0.9%
Pacific Islander: 0.1%
Other: 6.7%
Multiracial: 2.7%
Hispanic of any race: 22.4%

Or, say, California, Florida, Idaho, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Tennessee:

White: 68.5%
Black: 11.9%
Asian: 7.0%
Native American: 0.7%
Pacific Islander: 0.2%
Other: 8.4%
Multiracial: 3.3%
Hispanic of any race: 21.5%

Compare that to Iowa plus New Hampshire:

White: 92.1%
Black: 2.4%
Asian: 1.9%
Native American: 0.3%
Pacific Islander: 0.1%
Other: 1.6%
Multiracial: 1.7%
Hispanic of any race: 4.3%

And compare to the entire US population:

White: 72.4%
Black: 12.6%
Asian: 4.8%
Native American: 0.9%
Pacific Islander: 0.2%
Other: 6.2%
Multiracial: 2.9%
Hispanic of any race: 16.3%

To resolve the inclusion of the District of Columbia, it would randomly be inserted into one of the five primary weeks.

It would result in higher travel costs for candidates, but would even out representation in our political system, by forcing candidates early on to answer to a more racially, regionally, politically and culturally diverse population, representative of the nation at large.