- The Democratic and Republican primary processes have been filled with frustration over how delegates are assigned.
- The Democratic Party's system has been criticized for not accurately reflecting the popular vote.
- The Republican Party's system allows for delegates to become unbound and vote for whomever they want.
- Both parties have their own ways of potentially influencing the outcome of the nomination process.
- The current system is seen as convoluted and not reflective of how most people assume presidential selection works.

The piece discusses the flaws in the current primary system used by both political parties in the United States. It highlights the lack of transparency and the potential for voter alienation. The author emphasizes the need for wholesale reform and suggests that voters should voice their concerns to party leaders. The piece concludes by warning that unless changes are made, the same flawed process will continue to repeat itself.

Primaries and caucuses are a surprisingly undemocratic part of the democratic process. John Oliver discusses our convoluted system for choosing presidential nominees. 

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-♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Presidential primaries and caucuses.

The electoral foreplay that we've been engaging in since February, which will culminate in the mass balloon ejaculations of this summer's conventions.

And it looks like America will be choosing between Donald Trump, America's walking, talking brush fire, and, in all likelihood, Hillary Clinton, the woman who exhibits either too much or too little of every human quality, depending on who you ask.

Which is not to say that the Democrats' primary process is over.

As we saw in Nevada last weekend, it is very much still raging.

Emotions ran high at the Democratic State Convention in Las Vegas after Hillary Clinton took more delegate wins than Bernie Sanders Saturday.

Usually when a crowd is that angry in Vegas, it's because they just realized there are no elephants in Cirque du Soleil, just a bunch of terrifying nightmare perverts.

But it is not just Nevada that has caused frustration over how delegates are assigned.

Throughout this process, thanks to an odd quirk in the Democrat system, there have been news reports like

Bernie Sanders wins 56 to 44 percent in Wyoming.

The delegates rewarded Hillary Clinton 11, Bernie Sanders 7.

Why does the Democratic Party even have voting booths?

We have voting booths for the same reason that Friendly's has restaurant booths.

So that we can have relative privacy while we choose from a deeply unappetizing menu.

When Donald Trump won Louisiana, beating Ted Cruz by more than 3 percent, he was upset to discover that Cruz could potentially get as many as 10 more delegates.

And then when everything is done, I find out I get less delegates than this guy that got his ass kicked, okay?

The thing is, I get why he's annoyed, and there is no clearer piece of evidence that our system is broken.

No more thoroughly dead canary in the coal mine than when Donald Trump is actually making sense.

Because when you see results like that, the process does feel counterintuitive.

So tonight, we thought we'd ask, why do the parties operate this way?

Until 50 years ago, most states didn't even have primaries, and candidates were chosen by party insiders at the convention.

But in 1968, that system broke down when the Democratic Party leadership picked Hubert Humphrey, despite the fact he hadn't even competed in a primary.

Democrats were pissed off, and the convention was chaos.

The man being pushed, watch it, they're gonna knock that over.

The man is a delegate, they're asking for silence.

There's a priest in here, dozens of reporters, and the man who got involved in it all is very calmly smoking a cigarette.

He's not just smoking any cigarette, he's smoking a Chesterfield.

Once you've turned democracy into a riot, you deserve a Chesterfield!

Now, in the years that followed that mess, both parties reformed their processes to give their rank and file members more of a say, But many of the details were left up to state leaders, which might help explain why we have such an erratic clusterfuck every 4 years.

Almost every part of this process is difficult to defend.

For instance, while most states hold primaries, in all of these states, 1 or both parties hold caucuses, which, as I'm sure you know, is a process whereby you typically have to turn up to a certain place at a certain time, like a school gymnasium at 7 p.m., attend a party meeting that can take hours, and then vote, which can be prohibited, because if you work at night, or you can't get a babysitter, or you don't have transportation, you can be frozen out.

And that is probably why, while Republican primary turnout in 2012 was 19 percent, their turnout for caucuses averaged just 3 percent, which is terrible.

If you have 3 percent turnout at an orgy, it's basically just you masturbating next to a table full of uneaten snacks.

So, generally, generally, you are lucky if you live in a state that has a primary, Unless you're a Democrat in Washington state where things get a little more complicated.

In Washington state, we have both caucuses...

Can anybody else speak up on their candidate?

...And presidential primaries, where you actually cast a ballot in private.

But Democrats have never liked the primary, and they've ignored it from day 1.

The Democrats' presidential primary in Washington doesn't count.

They have 1, and it's this Tuesday, but all the pledged delegates were decided at their caucus months ago.

So, you know your awful friend who says he doesn't vote because he doesn't feel like his vote counts?

If he's a Washington Democrat participating in the primary, he's right.

And then there's the problem of how the delegates get divided up, which is key.

Because remember, you're not directly voting for a candidate, you're voting to help determine the delegates who will attend the National Party Convention and vote for a candidate on your behalf.

And some states have even more steps in between.

Just look at what led up to last weekend's events in Nevada.

They had a caucus back in February, which Hillary Clinton won, but that caucus only determined 23 out of their 35 regular delegates.

As for the remaining 12, those were decided by delegates at the state convention, who were chosen by the delegates at county conventions in April, who were chosen in those February caucuses, which, remember, Hillary won.

Now, unfortunately for her, at those county conventions, more Bernie supporters showed up, so they had an advantage going into the state convention.

Although, by that time, Hillary supporters had realized what was happening and had managed to mobilize their turnout, putting numbers in that room basically even.

At which point, both sides began fighting to disqualify 1 another's delegates over technicalities such as failing to register as Democrats by May the 1st, a deadline set after it had already passed at the convention by the credentials committee.

And at this point, whoever you support, you probably feel like this.

I just don't know if there's a better summation of this entire primary process so far than that sound.

Now, for the record, PolitiFact looked into the charges of rigging in Nevada and found no clear evidence the state party hijacked the process.

And you can disagree with that, as I am sure Bernie supporters will in the comment section below this video, alongside hurtful remarks about my personal appearance, like, -"Oh, look, it's British Millhouse." -$MILLHOUSE.

Or, he looks like someone who says, my parents are my best friends, but who's also an orphan.

Or, did someone just Benjamin Button Henry Kissinger?

All of which statements PolitiFact also rates as true.

But, but the larger point PolitiFact made regarding Nevada, that I think everyone can agree with, is the arcane party structures don't reflect how most people assume presidential selection works.

You don't get to the end of a football game and say, okay, who found the most eggs?

That's what we were supposed to be doing?

Why didn't someone tell me that at the start?

And look, this patchwork of convoluted systems would be annoying enough, but each party also has its own way of potentially putting its thumb on the scale.

About 15% of the total delegates to this summer's Democratic convention are unpledged.

These are elected officials, former presidents, and assorted party bigwigs called superdelegates.

They can vote for whichever candidate they want, regardless of who won in their state or district.

Okay, so the delegates are super in the way the kids on My Super Sweet 16 are super.

They are party obsessed, widely resented, and untethered from all responsibility.

Now, the theory behind superdelegates was that the party leaders could step in if they didn't like the way things were heading.

Which is what makes it so weird that whenever Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC, is asked about them, she insists that superdelegates would never do that.

Look, we have party activists, elected officials, and other leaders that are a part of our process, but who have never determined the outcome of our nominee.

Yeah, but if they're not going to make a difference, then why take the risk of having them at all?

You're basically keeping rat poison in a jar next to the sugar, saying, -"Hey, it hasn't been a problem yet." -$25,000.

That might technically be true, but is this really the best system you can think of?

Meanwhile, Republicans have their own way of diluting the power of primary votes.

In many states, delegates are only required to reflect their state's choice in the first round of convention voting.

After that, they become unbound delegates and can vote for whomever they want.

And Pennsylvania takes this even further.

Out of their 71 delegates, 54 are completely unbound, even on the first ballot.

And while these delegates are elected by voters, those voters may not know what they're actually voting for.

If you're a GOP voter, you may well know which candidate you are choosing when you step into the voting booth.

But when it comes to choosing delegates to the presidential convention, there's no way for you to know which ones support which candidates because it's simply not listed.

Like you vote, But who are you voting for?

Listen, if Dancing With The Stars had a system where instead of voting directly for Paige Van Zandt or Ginger Zee, you had to vote for Doug or Karen to vote on your behalf, neither of whom will tell you which dancer they prefer, there will be riots in the streets.

And it gets 1 step crazier, because this year, North Dakota Republicans just said, fuck it, and had neither a caucus nor a primary.

The party just chose 28 delegates themselves.

And in explaining why primaries aren't that important, 1 of those delegates kind of gave the whole game away.

In previous years, we've used primaries to probably get us some kind of an indication of the preference of the population, but the delegates at the convention choose the nominee, not the voters in the primaries.

So, basically, he's treating the more than 27 million people who voted so far in the Republican primaries like a parent treats a kid with a toy lawnmower.

--LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE AND CHEERING --And, look, to be fair to both parties, they're basically private clubs.

In theory, they could give the nomination to whichever candidate comes first alphabetically, or whichever 1 can squeeze a frog the hardest without crushing it.

But, if you play by a system of complex, opaque rules that almost nobody understands, and that you could use your advantage, even if you don't, you are going to alienate voters.

This is a system which clearly needs wholesale reform.

The problem is, once the system produces a winner, the conversation tends to just move on.

And if you need any more proof of that, just listen to Trump earlier this month.

You've been hearing me say it's a rigged system, but now I don't say it anymore because I won.

It's clear, nobody wants to change the weird rules if they win.

You think the producers of The Martian are complaining about the rules by which the Golden Globes actually gave them best motion picture, comedy, or musical?

They're just busy writing another movie as side-splittingly hilarious as Matt Damon potato farming in space for 2 hours.

It would clearly behoove both parties to take a long, hard look at this, because they actually got lucky this time.

Whether you like These 2 candidates or not, it does seem the party nominees will coincidentally be the people with the most votes.

Trump currently has a lead of nearly 4000000 over his closest competitor, and Hillary leads Sanders by over 3000000.

And Sanders supporters might argue that doesn't include all caucus votes.

But when the Washington Post estimated the rest, they found that she would still lead by 2.9 million votes.

And even if you multiply all those estimated caucus votes by 7 to account for lower turnout, even if you give Bernie a bonus of 10,000 extra votes in every state that's voted so far.

And even if you tack on an extra 100,000 votes just for shits and giggles, she's still comfortably ahead.

And I know, Bernie supporters, I can hear you typing right now...

-...that I look like an angry toucan funded by Schillery, but that doesn't make that any less true.

But the problem is, there is no guarantee that the candidate with the most votes will win next time.

And if they don't, all the flaws we just documented will be exposed yet again.

Because unfortunately, we only get angry about the primary process during the primary process when it's impacting the candidate that we care about.

But the middle of the game is the worst possible time to change the rules.

So if everyone is as angry as they say they are right now, let's together pick a date early next year to actually write an email to the chair of each party and remind them politely to fix this.

Now, that will be easy to remember because it's Groundhog Day, which does seem appropriate, because unless this primary process is fixed, we are all destined to live through the same nightmare scenario over and over again until the end of f***ing time.


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ ♪ Presidential primaries and caucuses. The electoral foreplay that we've been engaging in since February, which will culminate in the mass balloon ejaculations of this summer's conventions. Both parties nearly have their nominee. And it looks like America will be choosing between Donald Trump, America's walking, talking brush fire, and, in all likelihood, Hillary Clinton, the woman who exhibits either too much or too little of every human quality, depending on who you ask. Which is not to say that the Democrats' primary process is over.

As we saw in Nevada last weekend, it is very much still raging.

Speaker 1: This is ridiculous. This whole process has been screwed up.

Speaker 2: Emotions ran high at the Democratic State Convention in Las Vegas after Hillary Clinton took more delegate wins than Bernie Sanders Saturday. Whoa!

Speaker 0: Holy shit! Usually when a crowd is that angry in Vegas, it's because they just realized there are no elephants in Cirque du Soleil, just a bunch of terrifying nightmare perverts. But it is not just Nevada that has caused frustration over how delegates are assigned. Throughout this process, thanks to an odd quirk in the Democrat system, there have been news reports like

Speaker 3: this. We're putting up right now a graphic. Bernie Sanders wins 56 to 44 percent in Wyoming. The delegates rewarded Hillary Clinton 11, Bernie Sanders 7. Why does the Democratic Party even have voting booths?

This system is so rigged.

Speaker 0: Oh, please. We have voting booths for the same reason that Friendly's has restaurant booths. So that we can have relative privacy while we choose from a deeply unappetizing menu. And it is not just the Democrats. When Donald Trump won Louisiana, beating Ted Cruz by more than 3 percent, he was upset to discover that Cruz could potentially get as many as 10 more delegates.

Or as he put it...

Speaker 4: I end up winning Louisiana. And then when everything is done, I find out I get less delegates than this guy that got his ass kicked, okay? Give me a break.

Speaker 0: The thing is, I get why he's annoyed, and there is no clearer piece of evidence that our system is broken. No more thoroughly dead canary in the coal mine than when Donald Trump is actually making sense. Because when you see results like that, the process does feel counterintuitive. So tonight, we thought we'd ask, why do the parties operate this way? Because for many years, they didn't.

Until 50 years ago, most states didn't even have primaries, and candidates were chosen by party insiders at the convention. But in 1968, that system broke down when the Democratic Party leadership picked Hubert Humphrey, despite the fact he hadn't even competed in a primary. Democrats were pissed off, and the convention was chaos.

Speaker 1: There's a lot of pushing. The man being pushed, watch it, they're gonna knock that over. The man is a delegate, they're asking for silence. There's a priest in here, dozens of reporters, and the man who got involved in it all is very calmly smoking a cigarette.

Speaker 0: Oh. 0. He's not just smoking any cigarette, he's smoking a Chesterfield. Chesterfield! Once you've turned democracy into a riot, you deserve a Chesterfield!

--Mm. --Woo! Now, in the years that followed that mess, both parties reformed their processes to give their rank and file members more of a say, But many of the details were left up to state leaders, which might help explain why we have such an erratic clusterfuck every 4 years. Almost every part of this process is difficult to defend. For instance, while most states hold primaries, in all of these states, 1 or both parties hold caucuses, which, as I'm sure you know, is a process whereby you typically have to turn up to a certain place at a certain time, like a school gymnasium at 7 p.m., attend a party meeting that can take hours, and then vote, which can be prohibited, because if you work at night, or you can't get a babysitter, or you don't have transportation, you can be frozen out.

And that is probably why, while Republican primary turnout in 2012 was 19 percent, their turnout for caucuses averaged just 3 percent, which is terrible. If you have 3 percent turnout at an orgy, it's basically just you masturbating next to a table full of uneaten snacks. -♪ I like it when you... -♪ I like it when you... So, generally, generally, you are lucky if you live in a state that has a primary, Unless you're a Democrat in Washington state where things get a little more complicated.

Speaker 5: In Washington state, we have both caucuses...

Speaker 2: Can anybody else speak up on their candidate?

Speaker 5: ...And presidential primaries, where you actually cast a ballot in private. But Democrats have never liked the primary, and they've ignored it from day 1.

Speaker 0: It's true. The Democrats' presidential primary in Washington doesn't count. They have 1, and it's this Tuesday, but all the pledged delegates were decided at their caucus months ago. So, you know your awful friend who says he doesn't vote because he doesn't feel like his vote counts? If he's a Washington Democrat participating in the primary, he's right.

He's still awful, but he is right. And then there's the problem of how the delegates get divided up, which is key. Because remember, you're not directly voting for a candidate, you're voting to help determine the delegates who will attend the National Party Convention and vote for a candidate on your behalf. And some states have even more steps in between. Just look at what led up to last weekend's events in Nevada.

They had a caucus back in February, which Hillary Clinton won, but that caucus only determined 23 out of their 35 regular delegates. As for the remaining 12, those were decided by delegates at the state convention, who were chosen by the delegates at county conventions in April, who were chosen in those February caucuses, which, remember, Hillary won. Now, unfortunately for her, at those county conventions, more Bernie supporters showed up, so they had an advantage going into the state convention. Although, by that time, Hillary supporters had realized what was happening and had managed to mobilize their turnout, putting numbers in that room basically even. At which point, both sides began fighting to disqualify 1 another's delegates over technicalities such as failing to register as Democrats by May the 1st, a deadline set after it had already passed at the convention by the credentials committee.

And at this point, whoever you support, you probably feel like this. -♪ Oh! -♪ Exactly! I just don't know if there's a better summation of this entire primary process so far than that sound. Now, for the record, PolitiFact looked into the charges of rigging in Nevada and found no clear evidence the state party hijacked the process.

And you can disagree with that, as I am sure Bernie supporters will in the comment section below this video, alongside hurtful remarks about my personal appearance, like, -"Oh, look, it's British Millhouse." -$MILLHOUSE. Or, he looks like someone who says, my parents are my best friends, but who's also an orphan. Or, did someone just Benjamin Button Henry Kissinger? All of which statements PolitiFact also rates as true. But, but the larger point PolitiFact made regarding Nevada, that I think everyone can agree with, is the arcane party structures don't reflect how most people assume presidential selection works.

And that in itself is a huge problem. Any competition should have clear rules. You don't get to the end of a football game and say, okay, who found the most eggs? Wait, what? That's what we were supposed to be doing?

Why didn't someone tell me that at the start? I only have 5 eggs. And look, this patchwork of convoluted systems would be annoying enough, but each party also has its own way of potentially putting its thumb on the scale. For Democrats, it's superdelegates.

Speaker 6: About 15% of the total delegates to this summer's Democratic convention are unpledged. These are elected officials, former presidents, and assorted party bigwigs called superdelegates. They can vote for whichever candidate they want, regardless of who won in their state or district.

Speaker 0: Okay, so the delegates are super in the way the kids on My Super Sweet 16 are super. They are party obsessed, widely resented, and untethered from all responsibility. Now, the theory behind superdelegates was that the party leaders could step in if they didn't like the way things were heading. Which is what makes it so weird that whenever Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the DNC, is asked about them, she insists that superdelegates would never do that.

Speaker 7: Look, we have party activists, elected officials, and other leaders that are a part of our process, but who have never determined the outcome of our nominee.

Speaker 0: Yeah, but if they're not going to make a difference, then why take the risk of having them at all? You're basically keeping rat poison in a jar next to the sugar, saying, -"Hey, it hasn't been a problem yet." -$25,000. That might technically be true, but is this really the best system you can think of? Meanwhile, Republicans have their own way of diluting the power of primary votes. In many states, delegates are only required to reflect their state's choice in the first round of convention voting.

After that, they become unbound delegates and can vote for whomever they want. And Pennsylvania takes this even further. Out of their 71 delegates, 54 are completely unbound, even on the first ballot. And while these delegates are elected by voters, those voters may not know what they're actually voting for.

Speaker 2: If you're a GOP voter, you may well know which candidate you are choosing when you step into the voting booth. But when it comes to choosing delegates to the presidential convention, there's no way for you to know which ones support which candidates because it's simply not listed. Like you vote, But who are you voting for? You have no idea.

Speaker 0: That makes no... Sense! Listen, if Dancing With The Stars had a system where instead of voting directly for Paige Van Zandt or Ginger Zee, you had to vote for Doug or Karen to vote on your behalf, neither of whom will tell you which dancer they prefer, there will be riots in the streets. And it gets 1 step crazier, because this year, North Dakota Republicans just said, fuck it, and had neither a caucus nor a primary. The party just chose 28 delegates themselves.

And in explaining why primaries aren't that important, 1 of those delegates kind of gave the whole game away.

Speaker 8: In previous years, we've used primaries to probably get us some kind of an indication of the preference of the population, but the delegates at the convention choose the nominee, not the voters in the primaries.

Speaker 0: So, basically, he's treating the more than 27 million people who voted so far in the Republican primaries like a parent treats a kid with a toy lawnmower. Oh, great job, Billy. You did it all on your own. Now, step aside, Daddy's coming through. --LAUGHTER, APPLAUSE AND CHEERING --And, look, to be fair to both parties, they're basically private clubs.

They can set their own rules. In theory, they could give the nomination to whichever candidate comes first alphabetically, or whichever 1 can squeeze a frog the hardest without crushing it. But, if you play by a system of complex, opaque rules that almost nobody understands, and that you could use your advantage, even if you don't, you are going to alienate voters. This is a system which clearly needs wholesale reform. The problem is, once the system produces a winner, the conversation tends to just move on.

And if you need any more proof of that, just listen to Trump earlier this month.

Speaker 4: You've been hearing me say it's a rigged system, but now I don't say it anymore because I won.

Speaker 2: Okay, it's true.

Speaker 4: You know, now I don't care. I don't care.

Speaker 0: Okay. It's clear, nobody wants to change the weird rules if they win. You think the producers of The Martian are complaining about the rules by which the Golden Globes actually gave them best motion picture, comedy, or musical? No, of course not. They're just busy writing another movie as side-splittingly hilarious as Matt Damon potato farming in space for 2 hours.

It would clearly behoove both parties to take a long, hard look at this, because they actually got lucky this time. Whether you like These 2 candidates or not, it does seem the party nominees will coincidentally be the people with the most votes. Trump currently has a lead of nearly 4000000 over his closest competitor, and Hillary leads Sanders by over 3000000. And Sanders supporters might argue that doesn't include all caucus votes. But when the Washington Post estimated the rest, they found that she would still lead by 2.9 million votes.

And even if you multiply all those estimated caucus votes by 7 to account for lower turnout, even if you give Bernie a bonus of 10,000 extra votes in every state that's voted so far. And even if you tack on an extra 100,000 votes just for shits and giggles, she's still comfortably ahead. And I know, Bernie supporters, I can hear you typing right now... -...that I can hear you typing... -...that I look like an angry toucan funded by Schillery, but that doesn't make that any less true.

But the problem is, there is no guarantee that the candidate with the most votes will win next time. And if they don't, all the flaws we just documented will be exposed yet again. Because unfortunately, we only get angry about the primary process during the primary process when it's impacting the candidate that we care about. But the middle of the game is the worst possible time to change the rules. So if everyone is as angry as they say they are right now, let's together pick a date early next year to actually write an email to the chair of each party and remind them politely to fix this.

I propose February 2nd. Now, that will be easy to remember because it's Groundhog Day, which does seem appropriate, because unless this primary process is fixed, we are all destined to live through the same nightmare scenario over and over again until the end of f***ing time.

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Primaries and Caucuses: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)