Parties Selecting Party Nominees: Most Do So Already Without Your Vote

There are a lot of people having fits over the way the Democratic party is allocating delegates to choose its nominee. However, lost in this discussion is how political parties other than the Republican and Democratic Party, will be choosing their delegates.

Well I was curious so I hopped on over to Wikipedia to find out.

The Libertarian Party will be choosing their presidential candidate at their national convention in May in Denver.

The Green Party will be choosing their presidential candidate at their national convention in July in Chicago.

The Constitution Party will be choosing their presidential candidate at their national convention in April in Kansas City.

The Prohibition Party have already chosen their presidential candidate - at their national convention last September in Indianapolis.

And the Socialist Party have already chosen their presidential candidate at their national convention last October in St. Louis.

Do you see a pattern?

No state primaries, no state caucuses, no ballots you or I, in any form, can weigh in on with our preference for these party nominations. Every one of them picked by party insiders, behind doors (that I'll assume were shut most of the time).

But you know what? That's perfectly fine. These are their candidates, so why shouldn't they be the ones that select them?

However, when it comes to selecting the nominees for the Democratic Party or Republican Party we have this long, drawn out process, with sub-elections in all the states and territories. Even Americans overseas get to weigh in, and their collective preference results in an allocation of 8 delegates.

The very thought that somewhere in a back room a nominee might be selected is enough to drive us into a frenzy.

In parliamentary systems the party leader is selected by the party insiders. If their party takes over parliament they become the nation's leader, perhaps as a prime minister. You never vote directly for those people, you do so by electing a member of parliament, and hoping enough of your party's members are elected.

In this country the general election pits the nominees of all the parties against each other. Americans get to vote directly on the candidates, although we still retain the antiquated Electoral College system for determining who wins the election, instead of simply counting the popular vote.

The general election is when we get to vote on the Libertarian, or Constitutional, or Democratic, or Republican candidate.

Granted, in modern elections we can only expect a Democratic or Republican candidate to win a general election, but a case can be made, and you don't have to like it, that the nomination process should be left up to the parties to determine how they want that to happen.

Sure, to us it matters if Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is chosen. But whether we vote on it after millions have been spent, and voting has been influenced by the best campaigner, or maybe by an unfortunate misstep, or one or the other is selected in a national convention, there will always be someone unhappy with the result.

The benefit of the popular vote approach is that it can result in a new face being selected. Insider politics would be based on power politics driven by seniority and entitlement. You rise to the top position and the next election you're the nominee. This year, that would probably have made Clinton the unquestioned selection. Obama would have to wait his turn.

Yet, the very fact "we the people" are being given the opportunity to chime in on the decision means that we get to decide if those traits that would give an insider the nod are actually what we want in our next president, should that candidate win the general election. The additional fact that so many people think whoever wins the Democratic nomination will win the general election, in essence makes the Democratic nomination the general election.

So I can see why a party would want to pick their nominee, and most of them do, but if you're unaffiliated, an Independent, and vote for people not parties, in such a situation as we are in now, you want to have a chance to pick who will become president, and the time to express that vote might be now, as we slog through each state's primary or caucus.

But at the end of the day, we're picking a party's presidential nominee, not yet voting for the presidential candidates. Parties should be allowed to determine how they wish to make their selection, and we will get to choose who we want to support, or not, in the general election. It is quite possible that if the candidates were all nominated the same way, through a simply national convention, without all these primaries, a strong alternative could more readily emerge from the other choices and upset the stranglehold the top two parties have on the White House.

But of course, that's precisely why the system won't be changing any time soon.