The Nevada caucuses came to a close on Saturday with a clear winner. Mitt Romney won the state by a sizable margin, obtaining about 15,000 votes so far with 89 percent of precincts reporting at the time of publication. Last month, Rick Santorum took away 13 delegates from the Iowa caucuses, beating Romney by a narrow margin of 34 votes. Last Saturday, Romney came out on top again in the Florida primary with 46.4 percent of the vote, earning 50 delegates.
Although it appears that Romney has solidified the GOP nomination with his three early victories, early voting primaries have definitely proven unreliable in the past. The entire primary process, in fact, unfairly winnows down the field and selects a frontrunner based on only a tiny sliver of each party's primary electorate.
Early-voting states like Iowa, Nevada, and Florida give a great deal of power to a small number of people. Although these Republican voters represent only a fraction of party members nationwide, they largely decide who will be cast as a "frontrunner" and who as an "underdog" for the remainder of the race.
Rick Santorum has been the biggest beneficiary of this flaw in the system. His victory in the Jan. 3 Iowa caucuses, razor-thin though it was, created the impression of widespread appeal. But the fact is, his brand of conservatism would not have been successful if, say, Georgia or Pennsylvania — states with much larger Republican constituencies — had been the first to vote.
Nevertheless, Santorum's popularity in Iowa catapulted him into the national spotlight, while Rick Perry's candidacy disintegrated, in spite of the fact that Perry had been leading Santorum in nationwide polling up until the Iowa caucuses.
Mathematically speaking, what did Santorum's victory amount to in the end? Nothing. The Iowa caucuses didn't award a single committed delegate. And yet he still walked away with the illusion of frontrunner status and a frenzy of media attention that was not at all commensurate with his true viability as a candidate.
Some states also have incredibly unfair delegate-awarding procedures. Florida sticks out the most in this regard, awarding all 50 of its delegates to the first place winner. Most states award their delegations proportionally, but because Florida refuses to budge from a winner-take-all system, Newt Gingrich, who came in second with 32 percent of the vote, gets nothing.
The other fairly obvious concern with the current system is its equity. Can a thousand or so people accurately represent the beliefs of millions?
This country prizes its electoral system for its ability to give everyone a voice. But that's not what actually happens. Everyone gets a say only after a select few get to speak before they do, and because these few "more or less" represent everyone, we consider the system a success. Only once the election has narrowed down to two candidates does the whole "every vote counts" ideology take hold.
By the time most Republicans actually have a chance to vote in the primary, the early-voting states will have essentially decided the race for them. This is a bizarrely inefficient system, and it hardly conforms to this country's democratic ideals.
