Proportional Representation

Charlie Cook says Democrats ought to revisit the proportional delegate allocation rule: "Democrats might want to consider establishing some type of 'bonus' delegates for winning a state, or at least modifying the party’s perverse proportional representation system, which, in a two-way race, makes it extremely difficult to build a lead and almost impossible to overtake an opponent who has one. But for this election, the rules are the rules."

As I understand it, the Democrats already do the bonus delegates thing. As for the proportional system, it's true that 2008 is making it look pretty bad. On the other hand, give us three or more similarly-matched candidates, or one front-runner plus two or three plausible alternatives, and suddenly winner-take-all starts looking bad. My suggested modification would be to adopt a more genuinely proportional system -- if you get 55 percent of the votes in a state, you get 55 percent of the delegates -- instead of the current system which relies on congressional districts. But if we want a shorter nominating contest next time around, the important thing is just to . . . shorten the primary season. Make April 1 the last day on which a state can hold a primary or caucus, and we'll wrap up by April 1. Or push that back to May 1 or June 1 or whatever you like. It's a pretty simple scheduling issue that doesn't seem to require changing the underlying nature of the voting process.