Should the nomination process belong to parties or voters?

There are two possible ways to conceive of the
way the presidential nomination process should
work: the party professional view, and the
public democracy view.

In the public democracy view, every voter
should be able to have a say in who
gets nominated. The nomination process
will have more legitimacy with the
voters if it’s open to all, but there
is the risk that uninformed voters can
be swayed by candidates superficially appealing
but substantively lacking.

In the party professional view, a political
party is a group of people who voluntarily
come together and present to the public
the candidate they think has the best chance
of both winning and governing according
to the philosophy of that party (those two
goals may not be compatible, so there may
be a need to compromise). Each party
can set up its own rules for how its
nomination procedure works.

There are advantages with the party professional
view: the candidates would be evaluated by
professionals that have at least some knowledge
of the issues and the candidates’ qualifications.
However, what if the parties are dominated
by entrenched interests that make sure the choice
of the public is limited to those that will
preserve those interests?

The current nomination system manages to combine
the worst features of both of these systems:
the lack of party professional evaluation
of candidates as in the first system, and the
entrenchment of two dominant parties as in the
second system.

How could we combine the best features of these
views? There would need to be a first stage
evaluation of candidates by party professionals
(specifically, the elected representatives)
while allowing for the possibility that a divided
party may submit more than one nomination to the
public, and also allowing for a reasonable way
for other candidates to join that are not part
of the dominant parties.

Then there would need to be a way to ensure
that the final choice is limited to two candidates
by having a top-two semifinal election
open to all voters (as in the public
democracy view). A final election with
more than two candidates runs the risk
of going seriously haywire and not representing
the voter’s will at all. More about this
in Freedom, Opportunity, and Security.

Previous posts on the nomination process:

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–Douglas Downing
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