By Craig Regan
In an era of instant gratification and attention spans on par with a gnat, the US system of primary presidential elections is an anomaly that defies explanation for someone not brought up on it.
Like Disney movies, the late Michael Jackson’s plastic surgery and Whitney Houston tributes, you can’t miss the primaries. They run from January to June and dominate Australian news coverage. Estimates for how much they cost go as high as $US5 billion.
That's far less than the $US3.2 trillion the Iraq war is supposed to have cost but not exactly small change.
The idea about bringing party delegates together to pick their candidate for the “real” election has only been around since the 1820s.The primaries rely on an insanely complex formula and has no real foundation in the US Constitution.
As the US Government’s own website rhetorically says: “How many times do we have to vote for president, anyway? Why can't we just go to the polls once in November and be done with it?”
I won’t bore you with all the answers but they’re mostly motherhood statements about giving people a chance to question candidates and feed into the democratic process.
They could do the same online and then cast a vote at the poll.
If the primaries are so good for democracy, how come only 48 percent of eligible Americans cast a vote? Of other countries where voting isn’t compulsory, Malta (94 percent), Chile (93 percent) and Austria (92 percent) rank much higher.
Australian has primaries. They’re called candidate pre-selections. You may not get to vote for the PM when you cast a vote, but the option is there to join a party and play a role in who becomes leader.
The US primaries are public blood-letting that provide media content, cost a bomb and reduce policy debate to the politics of the personal.
Americans should be kinder to their kids, ditch the primaries and let the baby-kissing start when the polls get really serious.