Earlier this week, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas became the first candidate to officially announce for President. For the next 11 to 14 months, Senator Cruz and others will be campaigning to win their parties nomination for president. One of the basic principles of political science is that one of the factors that determines who wins an election is the rules for determining who wins. The 2008 Democratic primary is a key example of this principle when then-Senator Obama managed to obtain a slight margin in the delegate count despite narrowly trailing then-Senator Clinton in the popular vote and then convinced party leaders that it was the slight lead in the delegate count that mattered.
As a first principle, in the U.S., the only truly national election is when the chosen electors meet in December of the presidential election year to cast their votes for President. Outside of that one vote, every other election is run by the states, with the states setting the rules for the election. For the most part, the individual states have opted to give “established” political parties an automatic ballot line on the general election ballot (with a party becoming established by receiving a certain percent of the vote in the last election). In all of the states, state parties affiliated with the national Democratic and Republican parties have automatic ballot lines for the presidential election. Additionally, state law (or state and national party rules) dictate that the candidates chosen for President and Vice-President by the national conventions of the two major parties will be the candidates for that party in a given state (along with the associated slate of electors chosen by state party).
Because the conventions choose the candidates, the rules for awarding convention delegates to the candidates (and then selecting individual candidates) determine who gets the nomination. As a general matter, national law has very little to do with this process. The main national law impacting the process is the campaign finance law which has more holes in it than swiss cheese, and it is likely that most spending in the 2016 race (even more so than in 2012) will be by “Super PACs” supporting individual candidates and operating outside of any limits (other than being prohibited from directly coordinating with their preferred candidate).
Instead, the rules for choosing the presidential nominees comes from three sources: 1) state law (particularly in terms of setting primary dates, determining who can vote in a primary, and establishing how candidates file); 2) national party rules; and 3) state party rules. There are some similarities and some differences between the two national parties in terms of the rules (and the exact details will be the subject of the next two posts). The three main similarities between the two parties are: 1) both establish March 1 as the first date for the start of the process (except for the states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina who can start earlier) and penalize states that violate the timing rule; 2) both parties determine by the national rules how many delegates each state (and each territory) gets; 3) both states give automatic delegate status to state party chairs and national committee people. The two main differences between the two parties are: 1) the Democratic Party rules are more detailed about how the state parties award delegates to candidates; and 2) the Democratic Party has more automatic delegates (a larger national committee and also granting delegate status to certain elected officials).
The differences in the party rules reflect a basic philosophical difference. The Democratic Party has determined that allowing different rules for winning delegates in different states results in voters having unequal input, making it more likely that a candidate can gain a lead in the delegate count while actually doing worse in terms of getting votes. In short, the Democratic Party is concerned with uniformity and fairness from state to state. The Republican Party on the other hand is more concerned with state autonomy — even if that means that a 2,000 vote victory in Florida gains a candidate more net delegates than a 50,000 vote victory in California.
Two cautions going forward for the following two posts. First, I am only going to be looking at the national rules at the present time. The exact rules for the individual states may be a subject for other posts in early 2016 as we approach each primary/caucus date. Second, despite the efforts of the national parties, the calendars are still a fluid thing as state legislatures are still meeting in most of the states and could change their primary dates at any time this year (depending on when the legislatures adjourn for the year).
