Tonight, watching the returns from Super Tuesday’s presidential primary elections, in which 24 of the 50 states of the Union voted, you find yourself thinking, “Wonder how a foreigner sees all this?”
He would be totally at sea. Absolutely lost.
So, let’s see if we can make a little sense of it.
One: the United States of America is a family made up of 50 states. Imagine having a family with 50 children, each different from the others, some not looking like anyone you know, and each one a strong personality and priding itself on its eccentricities.
America is not a monolithic single-entity, but is divided and subdivided into sections and regions. That is, this country is not like an apple–cut it open and it’s pretty much the same throughout–but is more like an orange, composed of sections, with each one a little different from the others.
Using the orange analogy, imagine cutting one open and pulling out the sections to find that one slice is a lemon, one a navel orange, one slice a tangerine, another grapefruit, and another a lime. They’re all members of the citrus family, but that’s where the similarities end.
That is the United States of America. Emphasis on “states.” We were states before we were united, and we have retained a lot of the characteristics of our independency.
Okay, now, second point: the political parties run their primaries however they please. The federal government has nothing to do with it. That’s completely surprising to outsiders. Here we are the last remaining superpower nation on earth and in choosing the next leader of the free world, our system is in the hands of the political parties in each state which are run by people we don’t know. And we meekly go along with it.
That’s why in this presidential primary, some states met in caucus to make their selections–remember Iowa in early January–while others asked the entire electorate to traipse to the polls and vote, as in New Hampshire in February. Today, Republicans in West Virginia met in caucus and announced this morning that Mike Huckabee received all 8 delegates for their party’s nomination.
Still on point two. States do not have to do things alike. Some states will award all the electoral votes to the person who wins their state’s primary, and the runners-up are left out in the cold. Other states will give so many votes to the winner based on the percentage he polled, so many to the runnerup, again based on his or her votes, and so on.
Confused? You’re not alone. I daresay the average citizen on the street does not have a clue how all this works. They read the paper and when it says, “Go to the polls Saturday,” they go. Well, 50 percent of us do, but that’s another story.
Third: then, this summer, after the caucuses and primaries have done their thing, delegates will gather in a large city for the Republican National Convention and in another city for the Democratic National Convention. There, delegates will either decide at that time or ratify the decision the voters have already made as to who their candidate for president will be.
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