Weaknesses in the U.S. Presidential Nomination Process

The presidential nomination process refers to an indirect type of election which registered voters among the United States citizens in all the states including Washington D.C do cast their votes to elect members of the United States Electrical College, popularly called electors. The elected electors then do cast their votes directly in their states which are called electoral votes. The electoral votes are used to elect both the vice president and the president (Steger and Wayne 2012).

There are several weaknesses that characterize this nomination process. These weaknesses are associated with the different steps of the nomination such as caucuses and primaries, national conventions, the general election, and the Electoral College. These weaknesses include; low voter turnout that do not represent the total number of citizens that are legally eligible to vote, forced fast establishment of candidates’ reputation associated with regionalisation and frontloading, high cost associated with presidential election using a primary system, self –inflicted damages related to this primary and also the process takes too long.

The presidential nomination process

This will greatly shorten the time duration taken for primaries and reduce the cost of campaigns for the candidates. The campaign periods will be reduced making the process fairer to candidates with limited sources of funds. Further, this would reduce the over consideration of some states like New Hampshire and Iowa since all states will be given equal voting weight in each region. This would also make the primaries a national event than a state affair. However, grouping of states into regions should be done in consideration that too large regions in primaries may lead to low turnout among eligible voters as indicated earlier due to reduced attention given to specific states by the