AN UPDATE ON THE NOMINATION PROCESS.

AN UPDATE ON THE NOMINATION PROCESS. Last November I posted here about my continuing hopes for a better presidential nomination process—in particular, my hopes for more contested conventions. Elaine Kamarck, a member of the Democratic National Committee, had an article in the Wall Street Journal (March 7) about the changes in rules which have enabled the contest for the Republican nomination to last longer than usual. She identifies two major changes. First, the system of public financing—which limited fund-raising and denied matching funds to candidates who couldn’t win 10% support in consecutive primaries—is gone. Second, each party gave incentives to states to hold their primaries later. Republicans let states that hold primaries after April use winner-take-all; Democrats give bonus delegates to states that hold primaries after April. This year only 6% of the Democratic candidates only 13% of the Republican candidates were chosen before March. The result has been to reduce the importance of New Hampshire and Iowa.