Smart BYU Perfessors: The Problems With Caucuses and Conventions

A fantastic online academic "paper." backed up with extremely solid BYU academic research and analysis, of course

In the interest of promoting a wee bit of Weber County Forum discussion in what's left of this Monday morning, and as our latest installment in our full-court press to promote the Count My Vote citizizens intiative petition drive, which is aimed to replace Utah's "crackpot-oriented" Caucus/Convention Nomination System with a much more citizen inclusive Direct Primary nomination procedure, we're delighted to highlight this scholarly guest post by Brigham Young University political scientists Christopher Karpowitz and Jeremy C. Pope, which was lodged this morning, on the award winning Washington Post-based Monkey Cage Blog:

• The problems with caucuses and conventions

This online academic "paper" is backed up with extremely solid academic research and analysis, of course, which is something we always applaud, especially when propelled by the rigorous research of "perfessors" tenured at BYU:

• Who Caucuses? An Experimental Approach to Institutional Design and Electoral Participation

So what about it folks?

Right now a movement called Count My Vote is trying to change the Utah system from a caucus/convention system to a primary system and may get the issue on Utah’s ballot next fall, although the campaign is still in its early stages. In our view, the key question is one of representativeness. Will the parties choose electoral institutions preferred by the most ideologically committed participants, or will they choose institutions that attract a wider and more representative sample of voters?

Don't let the cat get yer tongues, O Gentle Ones.