Primaries, Caucuses, and the People...oh my!

Primaries are supposed to be the next leap in democracy. They take power away from big scary men smoking cigars in back rooms (they probably have evil looking mustaches too) deciding candidates for office without a care for what the dear old people want. That's the image that reformers like to paint up, at least. Lets look at whither primaries are the liberating force that their supposed to be, or are they the new scary cigar chomping back room men.

The primary election is one that usually has the lowest turnout. While those in the political class (or really close to it) look to the primary to see what is in stored for the election cycle and what it means for the next two to four years, the rest of the country goes about their business without even knowing that an election was taking place. One may argue that lack of voter participation does not mean that a system is bad in theory, and on the surface this may be true. However, the lack of voter participation shows that the system in practice is not meeting theoretical needs (in this case bringing democracy closer to the people). There are many reasons why people don't go out to the primary polls, one of them being is they just don't care about the primaries. Various attitudes about government and politics make voting a chore, least of all an insane practice when the vote cast now forces you to do the same thing again in a few months. This atmosphere generates only one kind of turnout to the primary polls: those who follow and have a vested interest in the election. These people are few in number, but big in ideas. “Extremists” makeup a lot of these people and candidates who don't stand a chance in the eyes of the general public are given their fare share here. I could cry about about how this affects the party by taking power from its hold on candidates by creating candidate cults that the candidate is only accountable to, but I don't care. Ultimately, the primary is a tool to decide the party's look for the next election, but it doesn't give the party much say in it what that look is going to be.

The solution would be to bring back either caucus or at the very least a closed primary. These systems force people to declare their party affiliation ahead of time, so the party can be certain that those voting in the primary would are in the party. This would in part, limit or eliminate cross over votes (people from another party monkeying around in the other's to help their party out in the general), but it would also could inspire a more dedicated party system to getting out the diversified party vote. Caucuses are even better because before you vote, a discussion can be had on to what the party should look like. This can also be used to gather data to see who in the party is participating and what groups need a bigger nudge to the caucus. If the goal is to win elections and gain power, then candidates that everyone can agree on are needed, not those on the fringes. A closed primary might help out, but a caucus would be even better.

P.s. Of course all this could be moot since fund raising, front loading (in the case of the President), and the media all determine the candidates before the people make up their minds.