There
is no provision for the role of political parties in the US
Constitution: founding fathers
could not anticipate the role as political parties did not develop
until the early 19th century. While the influence of political
parties was growing, this was yet another challenge to the
development of American democracy: how to maintain transparency of
parties’ positions and actions, how to prevent the separation of
party authority from party members. In particular, the challenge
was, and is, the mechanism of presidential candidates nomination.
Before 1820, Democratic and Republican members of Congress would
nominate a single candidate from their party. That system
collapsed in 1824, and by 1832 the preferred mechanism for
nomination was a national convention. With the population growth,
city population of early 20th century especially, the party
candidate nomination through primary elections (organized by the
governments, state and local) and caucuses (local party meetings
devoted to candidate nominations) took over: Oregon became the
first state to establish a presidential preference primary in
1910, by 1912 there were 12 states with primaries and 20 states by
1920. This year 29 Democratic and 28 Republican primaries/caucuses
are scheduled. The primary/caucus mechanism is continuously under
refinement, a sign of living democracy, but the goal was well
stated hundred years ago (see below). |