Kennedy School Symposium on Presidential Primaries Process

Next week Harvard's Kennedy School of Government will be holding a symposium to examine the presidential primary process.

"The first-of-its-kind, day-long event will gather Secretaries of State and other elected officials, political strategists, Democratic and Republican Party rules committee members and state-party chairs, congressional staff, members of the media, noted election law experts and governmental scholars to participate in an effort to consider improvements in the way future presidential nominating contests take place."

It will be interesting to see if the resulting published transcript reveals a consensus for a rotating regional primary system like the one pushed by the National Association for Secretaries of State (a partner in this effort). That may be a cynical approach, but as I have stated in this space on numerous occasions, pulling that off is going to be a nearly insurmountable task. The fact this is a bipartisan effort though, leaves room for some hope however, if change to the current system is the goal.


Oh and while you're over at the Kennedy School's site, have a look around. They have some neat things in their Election 2008 section. Elaine Kamarck's history of superdelegates was a good read.