Jimmy Carter is Right

I have to give to Jay Leno; he strives hard to find the best comedians and put them on his show. Last week he had Jimmy Carter on his show.

According the AP, Carter stated during his Tonight Show appearance that delegates from Florida and Michigan should not be counted at the Democratic National Convention because they "disqualified themselves." As much as I hate to admit it, I agree with him. The Democrats shouldn’t feel compelled to seat them. Florida and Michigan broke the rules set out by the party and the party can do whatever it dang well pleases.

The talk over the last few months about what to do about Florida and Michigan reflects a lack of understanding of what primaries actually are. The media, Mrs. Clinton, and people on the right who are happy to see the process drag on, all promote the misinformation. You hear things like, “the Democrats are disenfranchising voters”; “we live in a country where every vote should count”; and comparisons to the 2000 election abound.

There’s one small problem with that premise. Political party primaries have NOTHING to do with voting in the Constitutional sense! People who vote in primaries are not really voting; they are merely helping to select the nominee of a political party. Political parties are private organizations and they have the right to select their nominees in whatever manner they wish. If they wanted to, they could rip pages from the phone book, tack them to the wall, throw a dart at the pages, and select as their nominee the name of the person on whom the dart lands (I think that’s how that’s how the Green Party does it).

The Constitution says NOTHING about political parties, primaries, conventions, or even about the popular election of the president. All the Constitution says about electing the President is:

[The President] shall…be elected, as follows: Each State shall appoint…a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress. …The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot…and they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; …and transmit [the list] to…the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall…open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President. (There is more text in the actual section than I quoted because it is not pertinent to the point of this article. You can find the full text of the Constitution on-line at http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html)

Didn’t see any mention of primaries, or Democrats or Republicans there did you? Here are some important facts about primaries:

• The first political primary didn’t occur until 1910. It was in held in Oregon.
  
• The New Hampshire primary didn’t begin until 1916.
  
• Some primaries are “non-binding”, AKA “beauty contents”, which means that convention delegate selection has nothing to do with the results of the primary.
  
• And of course, several states select their convention delegates via caucus and not by primary.
  
• Smaller parties generally select their nominees completely outside of the primary process.
  

The situation is exposing two issues that are of greater concern:

As already noted, many people, including media people who should know better, don’t understand the facts well enough to realize they are misinformed. We would do well to reinforce that the parties are private organizations that are free to select whatever method they wish to choose their nominees. They could count Florida and Michigan twice if they wanted to.

The larger and more critical issue is we seem to have forgotten that the two parties are private organizations that have nothing to do with the constitutional process. They have been in power so long and have passed rules and laws that make it appear that our process actually sanctifies the two-party system. They impress us that they are the only ones who can carry out any valid political activity. When people are frustrated by the two parties, there is little they can do; the parties are so entrenched they are indeed part of the system.

I wish I had answer for this one, but someone smarter than I will have to figure that out. Maybe we should ask Jimmy Carter.