​PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION FRUSTRATION

The current presidential race is doing the complete opposite of helping to encourage turnout and persuade voters that they can actually make a difference in the process. Of course, this could be easily be blamed on the quality of the candidates and don’t get me wrong, that is a significant factor.

But what’s equally frustrating is a presidential nomination process which sees candidates win individual states by significant numbers only to lose the delegate count to their opponent because of arcane and inept party rules. If we are going to pick Presidential candidates with super delegates made up of party officials and elected leaders, why should individual voters in either party vote?

Citizens are already disgruntled because even when they elect someone they are happy with, that politician ultimately gets consumed by Washington, DC and votes more based on who their contributors are and political calculations over promises made during campaigns. How are we going to get more people to vote when they look at the ones who do vote and it doesn’t even matter?

The latest examples of this are happening in both parties. Bernie Sanders recently beat Hillary Clinton significantly in Wyoming but still may lose the delegate count to her because of super delegates that are bound to Hillary. Sanders has won 8 of the last 9 contests in the Democratic primary race but hasn’t been able to cut into Hillary’s lead that much.

In Colorado, Ted Cruz won all 34 delegates because GOP party officials changed the rules to pick their nominee at the state party convention, much like the North Dakota Republican party. It resulted in a viral video which showed a Colorado voter burning his voter registration card and Trump using it as example of how the establishment is trying to pick the nominee, disenfranchising individual voters.

The one difference between the Democrat and Republican races is that Trump is in the lead while Sanders is behind, but both have been battling establishment forces who don’t want them to win and will do whatever they can to prevent it.

The one thing I don’t understand, however, is the plan for these establishment officials to unite the party and get rank and file voters to vote for the eventual nominees, if rules and backroom deals result in the eventual winner. If someone feels their vote didn’t matter and the winner didn’t win fair and square, they are not going to rush out and vote for the nominee.

And people wonder why there is so much apathy in America. This is why people feel their vote doesn’t matter. Even if these rules are legal, is this really the way we want to pick a Presidential nominee? And if Sanders or Trump gets more votes than their opponents yet still does not get the nomination, you can bet the majority of those people won’t be rushing to the ballot box in November of 2016.

The process isn’t over yet. Super delegates aren’t bound until the party conventions in July this summer. They could switch even if they’ve committed and some have. It is completely within the rules for either Trump or Sanders to lobby them to do so. But do we really want to have races where individual candidates win the popular vote but lose the delegate count?

It’s funny because you don’t see Trump and Sanders agree on much, but this is one area where they are unifying. The media is starting to pay attention, in part because of the two examples where it is so egregious.

Last week I highlighted the North Dakota GOP Convention, where moderate elected leaders and convention goers appeared to thumb their nose at Trump in favor of Cruz before anyone got the chance to vote. Where is the voter outrage in the state over this? It wasn’t as big an advantage as in Colorado, where Cruz won all delegates, but it was still a large victory.

I often say the one who wins the presidency is the candidate who looks more like the adult in the room than the other. Who will win if both adults look like someone rigged the process? This is where third parties could come in and finally make a difference.

Party establishment leaders may think they are doing the right thing for the country by picking the nominee they feel that has the best chance to win. But by overruling voters and making people who actually took time to come to the polls in votes at caucuses and primaries irrelevant, they are doing the worst possible thing they can for the eventual nominee.

Good luck with contested conventions and explaining party delegate rules after the fact. It is almost like they want voter turnout to be low. Guess what? They probably do.