Primary Election History in the United States

Primary Election History

Introduction to Primary Election History

In the early years of the American republic, during a period in which political parties were first becoming organized, candidates for president and vice president were selected by a caucus consisting largely of party members in Congress. This method was denounced as “King Caucus” by the followers of Andrew Jackson, who failed to receive the presidential nomination in 1824 because of lack of support in the congressional caucus. By the 1830s political parties had become more organized, and they were able to appeal to the public for support. The parties adopted the national party convention for selecting presidential and vice-presidential candidates, ensuring that every state party was represented.

First used in the United States in the presidential election of 1832, the nominating convention was hailed as a great reform, and it spread rapidly to all levels of government. Voters of the party, meeting locally, elected delegates to city or county conventions, which selected the nominees of the party for local offices and elected party officers to manage the party affairs until the next convention. Each convention also elected delegates to the next higher convention. In theory the system was truly representative, each convention representing the wishes of the rank-and-file voters of the party. In practice, however, delegates to the convention were usually picked by party bosses. By the end of the 19th century, the convention was criticized as part of a corrupt, boss-dominated system.

Political reformers from the Progressive movement sought to end the domination of party bosses and so adopted an existing but little-used reform-the primary election. The Democratic Party had held the first primary election in 1842 in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, but until the Progressive era, the use of primary elections was limited to local elections in cities and counties. During the 1890s the Progressives were instrumental in instituting primaries in several statewide elections. In 1901 Florida enacted the first law giving state or local officials the option of using a primary system to elect delegates to the Democratic national convention, but officials declined to use the system. In 1905 Wisconsin, under the leadership of Governor Robert M. La Follette, Sr., a Progressive Republican, passed the first law mandating a presidential primary. By 1917 all but four states had adopted the primary system for some or all elected offices.

Presidential primaries, although created at the beginning of the 20th century, were not very important then. Relatively few states used them, and even fewer required their delegates to vote as the public had in the primary election. As a result, the way to win the presidential nomination was by appealing directly to party leaders. Following the bitterly disputed nomination of Hubert Humphrey at the 1968 Democratic national convention, the parties reformed the old, boss-dominated system. By the 1972 election, primaries had become the dominant path to the presidential nomination. Since then, candidates have run for their party’s presidential nomination by campaigning for the support of the public in presidential primaries and the few primary-like caucuses, such as the Iowa caucuses.

Although primary elections are generally considered democratic, during the first half of the 20th century they were part of an ingrained system of excluding African Americans from voting in the racially segregated South. Officials of the Democratic Party in the South barred African Americans from membership in the party and used a closed-primary law to admit only white persons to its primaries. Since that party was then dominant in Southern politics, Democratic candidates were the only ones with any chance of winning office in the subsequent general election. Therefore, African Americans essentially were excluded from the only election that counted. The white primary, as it came to be called, was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court in 1944 in the case Smith v. Allwright. However, African Americans continued to be disenfranchised in the South until the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, which suspended the use of voter qualification tests and other impediments to voting.” (1)

Resources

Notes and References

• Information about Primary Election History in the Encarta Online Encyclopedia

Guide to Primary Election History

About Voting

Voting Rights, Voter Participation, Election Redistricting, Electoral College (including Electoral College Selection, Counting the Votes, Electoral College Origins, Electoral College First Years, Electoral College History and the 12th Amendment, Disputed Elections of 1824 and 1876, Electoral College and the Influence of Political Parties, Winner-Take-All System, Debate Over the Electoral College and Electoral College Reform), Electorate Age and Electorate Constitutional Provisions.