Beacon Broadside

by Jane Eisner

MEADVILLE, Pa. – In this pretty, snowy college town deep in Pennsylvania’s
north country, enterprising college students are mapping out how to fix the
way we nominate presidential candidates. Their ideas are too good to ignore.

The Center for Political Participation at Allegheny College is embarking on
a two-year Nomination Reform Initiative, and its inaugural event yesterday (Feb.
13th) was inspiring, indeed. Representatives from 15 regional colleges studied
the nomination process through an on-line course provided by the New York Times
Knowledge Network. They learned the intricacies of the primary process, enumerated
its benefits (some) and its flaws (many), examined proposals for reform, and
then came up with their own ideas.

While there were unique and intriguing features in some of the reform ideas
– I’ll get to my favorites in a moment – there were also unmistakable common
threads. The students uniformly agreed that the system now on display in 2008
is too long, too messy, too confusing, and just plain unfair. Interestingly,
many of the students wanted to retain a central feature of the current primary
calendar – that is, the opening roles played by small states such as Iowa and
New Hampshire. The opportunity for retail politics, to share conversation with
a potential president while sipping coffee at a diner, still holds tremendous
appeal even to young Americans groomed in cyberspace.

They do, indeed, want to be able to reach out and touch their candidates. They just don’t want to relocate to Iowa or New Hampshire for the privilege.

And that was a key element of these proposals: A desire to fix a system that
is seen to be unfair because it favors the same small, unrepresentative states
year after election year.

A group of students from the University of Akron proposed to create four rounds
of primaries, starting in Iowa and New Hampshire, then moving to a bigger group
of small states, then a third round they call "National Primary Day",
and ending with the four largest states voting in what still could be a decisive
chapter in the process.

Small states would also lead off the calendar in the reform proposal offered
by students from Cleveland State University, only they thought that seven "mini
Super Tuesdays" would be a better way of rotating regional primaries throughout
the country. Regional primaries, in fact, seem attractive to lots of these students.
The delegation from Allegheny College suggested that the "regions"
be created by lumping together contiguous Congressional districts into five,
equal groups.

I’m not sure what’s happening at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania,
but they sure do produce students with innovative notions. One group offered
a complex plan that would use the lever of free television and public financing
to create, as they say, "a more democratic selection process than presently
exists." Or, as one student put it, "Democracy is expensive. You have
to make sacrifices."

I was most enchanted by another Slippery Rock plan to shorten the primary calendar
and rotate the order of states based on voter participation in the previous
presidential election. What a novel idea! Give citizens an incentive to turn
out on Election Day, to maintain a treasured spot at the head of the pack or
move up from a lonely position at the bottom. This would be especially appealing
to young voters, who often feel – with some justification – that their votes
don’t really matter.

This shorthand summary does not do justice to the complexities of some of these
proposals, which you should be able to soon access on www.nominationreform.org.
And no doubt the political establishment, which benefits mightily from the status
quo, could raise numerous objections to these ideas, some of which could rightly
be called naïve, others even radical.

The point here is that young people were figuring out how to fix the system
by working in the system – all with an eye to expanding voter participation
and engagement. These students were hardly representative of young Americans
their age. They were way too informed, earnest (and well-dressed.) But for a
few hours in a snowy corner of a college campus, they owned the future.

Jane Eisner, author of Taking Back The Vote: Getting American Youth Involved in Our Democracy, is the vice president for national programs and initiatives at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Prior to joining the center, Eisner was City Hall bureau chief, a foreign correspondent, editorial page editor and a nationally syndicated columnist for The Philadelphia Inquirer.