Presidential primaries -- better with a final national super Tuesday?

Selecting presidential candidates for the quadrennial November election by popular vote is a relatively recent innovation.  State primaries and caucuses in which candidates vied for citizen votes became an electoral force only in the mid-twentieth century.  Up until then, political party operatives held meetings and conducted conventions to choose each party's candidate for the upcoming presidential election.  The common practice of cigar smoking during these events gave us the concept of "smoke-filled rooms."

The current system of selecting presidential candidates for the general election is a chaotic combination of primaries and caucuses, voting for candidates and voting for delegates to the party's convention, proportional and winner-take-all (and winner-take-most!) awarding of a state's delegates to the convention, and a myriad of rules that affect the outcome of presidential candidate selection.

Since we have changed things before, maybe they should be changed again.  Contributor and reader Andy Garcia has some ideas:

A FINAL NATIONAL SUPER TUESDAY

The selection of candidates for the presidency of the most powerful and influential nation in the world is currently governed  by a hodgepodge of ever changing rules that differ from party to party, from state to state and from year to year. These inconsistent, confusing and sometimes unfair rules, combined with the special privileges allotted to Super Delegates who have the power to skew or nullify the votes of millions, can leave voters and candidates feeling manipulated, disenfranchised and resentful, and can cause many to believe the game is fixed and not worth their further involvement or concern.

 We can do better than this. And the fix is easy.

Standardize the election rules for all the states and territories, including rules protecting voting rights.

Do away with delegates so that each vote cast has the same weight as every other vote and the winner is decided not by some after the fact convoluted set of rules but simply by a counting of votes.

After each state has held a primary election, after the candidates have been vetted by months of campaigning and some contenders have fallen to the wayside, all the votes from all the states and territories can be calculated. Then let there be a National Super Tuesday when the top 2 remaining contenders from each party offer themselves up to the voters of their respective parties one last time. Those who voted early for other candidates that did not make the cut, those whose minds have been changed by months of campaigning, and those who neglected to vote in the first place, will all have a chance to offer their opinions.

And then, with the primaries declared over and the will of the people confirmed, the conventions can be called to order.

-- Andy Garcia, Long Beach CA