Why?  Because if we have learned anything from this primary season, it is that voters actually like feeling that their votes count, that the issues of their state and their community matter on a national level; if we have a national primary, it will be only the biggest, delgate-rich states that get any attention.  And, in my opinion, that's wrong.

I'm not sure what the answer is - some kind of regional plan that rotates from cycle to cycle, maybe, but still - on a regional level, there will be more campaigning in Pennsylvania and New York than there will be in Delaware, and I'm pretty sure Delaware voters would like to have some attention.

One of the most important guiding principles of this democracy is stability.  Complaining about unfairness during the process was subordinated to the good of the rules and the stability of the nominating system.  

Did those who won...whose candidate won...this time, think the system was flawed and needs changing?

Somehow I doubt it.

It's now 'their party.'

I doubt any more party changes are in order.

There are other issues to consider. The Democrats, in particular, should have clear rules for how states will be punished if they violate scheduling rules -- as Michigan and Florida did this year -- so the party does not end up making up new rules in the middle of the campaign.

The DNC definitely needs to fix the system somehow. Here are my suggestions.

Caucuses have to go. Primaries only.

Don't let the process go from January to June. If you do, don't fret and call for people to drop out because the process is going on for too long.

Everyone who voted in favor of the Michigan delegate-stealing formula needs to go. They show an arrogance and anti-democratic nature that has no place in the DNC.

Enough of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

No more superdelegates. The popular vote split evenly, the pledged delegates split 51-48, but the superdelegates decided the race by splitting 55-45.

No more of this nonsense about delegates per congressional district, and it being a big deal whether a district has an odd or even number of delegates. Statewide apportionment only.

Heaven forfend that they should come out strongly against caucuses before the event took place.

You know when I heard that kind of argument before? When the Bush team made it in 2000, declaring that we can straighten up the whole hanging chad thing in the next election. Wouldn't be fair to do it in this one!

These phonies really do make me sick. It's not enough that they enable terribly unjust things. It's that they insist on pretending afterwards that they are really concerned about reforming the abuses -- just next time.

1.  Get rid of Caucuses.
   
2.  Have a 50 state lottery on December 15, in which you pick 4 or 5 states to have an election every 2 weeks until all the states have voted. Start the election cycle the first Saturday in Feburary.
   
3. No SDs
   

FL Dems did not have control of the FL primary yet FL Dems paid.

The Democratic rules are, in their own way, poorly designed to translate votes into delegates.

Indeed.  But this is no side issue--it is the fundamental flaw in the present nomination process.  As currently designed, that process all but guarantees an unrepresentative result.  Under such conditions, an appeal to the "will of the people"--which should be dispositive in all cases--becomes just another talking point to argue over.

Here is the crux of the issue: while Democratic-style proportional allocation is indeed more representative in principle than GOP-style first-past-the-post allocation, the actual delegate allocation in the Democratic nomination is grotesquely unequal as between the voters of differnt states.  All the mischief stems from this.

The remedy is simple: allocate delegates at the conclusion of all nominating contests, in proportion to actual voter turnout in those contests.

Think all this accomplishes.  

At a single stroke, the almighty importance of the calendar (or rather of the earliest slots in the calendar) vanishes.  Given any calendar, it becomes possible to imagine winning strategies that bypass the early states (if they are unfavorable to a particular candidate) and focus on driving up turnout in later ones.  Every candidate can hope to construct their own personal "Super Tuesday".  

Secondly, one of two things happens to the troublesome, massively unrepresentative caucuses:  caucus states either opt for primaries, thereby at least giving themselves a chance to generate a turnout sizable enough to give their state a voice in the process proportional to its population, or else they maintain their caucuses (without explicit penalty or punishment from the party) but fade into insignificance, as their puny turnout numbers cause candidates to pass them up for better pickings elsewhere.

 NO regional primaries.  I don't want Dixiecrats to dominate.  Or New Englanders, for that matter.  No, rather, rotating primaries would do.

 Here:

 50 states.

 10 dates.

 5 states per date (figure out the territories later).

 Rotation 1: MI, IA, NV, HI, LA

 Rotation 2: WA, KS, FL, OH, MA

 Rotation 3: AK, OK, OH, NY, SC

 Rotation 4: OR, TX, IL, CT, VA

 etc.

The NYTimes endorsed Clinton.  They were not pulling for Obama.  They waited with the editorial until the process was finished for this year because you shouldn't change the rules after the votes.

The constitutional make-up of the US Congress is not one vote per voter in any manner.  As all know, CA has 2 senators, so does WY.  DC has none!

In the House, the Congressional Districts are apportioned, but there are states with a representative who don't have enough citizens to be a district.  Perhaps AL, certainly ND, VT,  and WY (& DC) don't have as many residents as the average US Congressional District.  The DC member, however, cannot vote.

The overall idea of "one person, one vote" has merit as suffrage, but not much traction in terms of politics.  Trying to convince a senator from Delaware that arithmetical apportionment within the Democratic Party nomination process is a truly great idea may not play very well.

Not all that long ago, the state legislatures sort of "appointed" US senators (changed by the 17th amendment, 1913, applied for election of 1914).

Secret ballot may have a testy road to travel, also.  The Town Meeting concept is alive & well in many places.  The concept of "stand up & be counted" is powerful among city councils, county commissions, state legislatures & the US congress.  A secret ballot is not necessarily a neutral, self-evident idea among politicians who are accustomed to their own public procedures.

For these 2 reasons, eliminating caucuses may not find a whole-hearted "endorsement" by the power structure of the Democratic Party.

Haven't thought about this much, but off the top of my head:

1. We could get rid of delegates and the party conventions owing to their environmental impact.
   
2. It's really silly to have both caucuses AND primaries as some states do -- make the process(es) uniform.
   
3. Jeralyn's quoted article on caucuses vs. primaries was sobering. Even though fixing that is not going to be easy, I'd like to see something tried to ensure that a vote in state X compares favorably to a vote in state Y.
   
4. Donating money from one candidate's PACs to other SD's should not be allowed. Better yet, consider eliminating SD's altogether.
   
5. Sources of internet donations should be made public, including names of donors and places of employment, and affiliations.
   
6. More radical perhaps: if corporations can insist on BOD's being outsiders -- we could consider that the rules committees should not be staffed by insiders. They should be elected or appointed on a rotating basis by the Judiciary. No back-doors should be allowed in terms of political appointee plum-jobs.
   
7. In terms of schedules - fixed state orderings don't seem right. Rotations have their problems too -- can you imagine IA having to wait out next 50 election cycles? A lottery + bidding system might be in order.

Have caucuses in 50 states, spread out from Jan-May. Caucuses are important for state legislative races, the platform, electing precinct committee people, etc. Have a preference poll at the caucuses, but it's nonbinding. Allow some reasonable sort of absentee or proxy voting for the caucuses, though the importance is reduced somewhat since it's nonbinding.

Then, the first Tuesday in June, we have a national, simultaneous, binding primary. States can optionally make that the primary day for all races, not just president (and most likely would because it's a cost saver to combine them).

Super D's don't get to vote unless there's not a 50%+1 winner of the national primary. When they do vote, their vote carries a weight that's calculated on some proportion of caucus and primary turnout in the district or state they represent.

So essentially, the caucuses would be where business gets done downticket and for party stuff, and they'd also be the horse race in terms of momentum and earned media for the presidentials, but the vote that counts doesn't belong to Iowa and New Hampshire, people can absentee vote, etc.

An added level of urgency could be added for the candidates and supporters to participate in that candidates who are not 30% viable in a state's caucus don't make it onto the state's national primary ballot. Candidates who are over 10% but under 30% can petition on, and candidates under 10% are screwed (so we don't end up with 50 people on the ballot in June).

It seems like after the 2000 fiasco, there was a lot of screaming to do something about it, and now it's fizzled out. I would hate to think that the party nomination process is going to get all the reform oxygen from here on out. And while I think it's important to improve the party nomination process, parties are essentially private clubs. The case for fixing their selection process is far less compelling than fixing the real election that takes place in November.

Regional primaries could end up favoring niche candidates with little national appeal.

So here are my thoughts:

No more caucuses.  Although the one Missouri caucus I attended (at 18, when I supported Ted Kennedy over Jimmy Carter) was extremely exciting, and although they tend to favor insurgent candidacies, which can sometimes be a good thing, the process should be made as inclusive as possible.  Period.

Rotating order for primaries, randomized to the greatest extent possible while maintaining the concept that states which have gone first in one election cycle may not do so in the next.

Primary days should be limited to bite-sized chunks of no more than five, or at most seven states.

Popular vote should determine the winner.

There should be no SDs.

There would have to be a draconian and absolutely codified penalty for any state which departed from this system.

I think the voters appreciated that as well.

I really don't know what I'm talking about here so please forgive me for my ignorance.  But what if we eliminated caucuses and had primaries staged every Tuesday from Jan thru the end of May with 4 or so randomly (lottery style) states chosen for each Tuesday.

Eliminating the caucuses would remove the disenfranchisement inherent in that system.  And choosing 4 states at random for a primary each Tuesday would remove the bias inherent in selecting specific states for their early results.

My concern about a National Primary Day is that many states wouldn't get the attention of the candidates.  And as we saw in this primary season, the need to campaign in 50 states showed us a very different reflection of the will of the voters than we would have had if we had only used the biased early state sample.

he's a republican.

Obama will have to win over a voting bloc consisting of dems, indies, and some republicans in order to beat him.

(1) Get rid of the superdelegates.

(2) Start slow. Have the first 3-4 weeks of primaries in small states so as limit the effect of money and name recognition.

(3) Make the first few primaries diverse. Include voices from diverse regions and diverse people.

(4) Limit early voting to something like 2 weeks before the primary.  Lots of folks voted before the candidates had a chance to campaign in their states.  If you don't, you sort of defeat the purpose of campaigning and the candidate with name recognition will have an even greater benefit.

(5) If you to start counting popular vote, you have to find some way to weight the value of caucuses and open vs closed primaries.  You'd also have to find a way to keep candidates from just camping out in the big states.

the least worthy person will likely be the nominee

the American system of voting is AWFUL....and yes, I mean to shout.....the delegate /electoral college system SUCKS BIG TIME

To eliminate ALL scheduling conflicts there should be NO Presidential only primaies.  

Presidential selection should be on the same ballot and held at the same time as the primaries that select all other candidates for public office.  Costs would be reduced by eliminating at least one statewide election and even in states that do not have party registration, crossovers would be minimized because the primary would select ALL candidates for public office. Even in a year with an incumbent President running for re-election, crossovers would be minimized because candidates for all public offices are selected.

No party central committee could botch primary date selection nor impose imbecilic penalties because the dates of the primaries would be a matter of state statute. An example is Michigan which held a Presidential Primary on January 15 but will hold a primary to select candidates for all other public offices on August 5th.  August 5th is a bit late and there's no reason that date can't be moved up a month or more. People who've decided to run for even low level offices usually know they'll run by mid-spring.

By the end of June delegates will have been selected in each state in plenty of time to hold national conventions by the end of July or early August. There's really no need to have a Presidential race lasts more than two months.

I'm guessing this is a minority view in a room full of direct-democracy advocates, but this is a representative-democracy process.

If we are going to have a convention, then the primary process should result in each state selecting the delegates best able to represent the state party's views at the national convention.

We would then delegate the responsibility of vetting and selecting a nominee to the delegates.  We could even pay them to spend a great deal of time doing that research and interviewing the nominees.

This eliminates both the problem that marketing tends to be the dominant factor in national campaigns and the problem that Iowa and New Hampshire are disproportionately influential.  The primaries could be held in any order or all on the same day.  A great candidate would need to convince just a few delegates before the convention but could stand a low-budget chance at the convention.