Unit 3 Objectives
26E & 26F
Brittany Greene
Alison Glisson
Anthony Leonard
Objective 26E
Compare and contrast the four
methods of nominating candidates for
public office: caucuses, nominating
conventions, primary elections, and
petitions.
Caucuses
• A caucus is a group of like-minded
people who meet to select the
candidates they will support in an
upcoming election.
• The first caucus
nominations were
made during the
later colonial period,
probably in Boston
in the 1720’s.
Caucuses
• Originally the caucus was a private
meeting consisting of a few influential
figures in the community. As political
parties appeared in the late 1700’s,
they soon began to broaden the
membership of the caucus.
Caucuses
• The legislative caucus (a meeting of a
party’s members in the state
legislature) took on the job of
nominating candidates for state
offices. At the national level, the Feds
and the Dem-Reps in Congress were,
by 1800, choosing their presidential
and vice-presidential candidates
through the congressional caucus.
Caucuses
• The spread of democracy, especially
in the newer states on the frontier,
spurred opposition to caucuses. More
and more, people condemned them
for their closed, unrepresentative
character.
Caucuses
• Criticism reached its peak in the early
1820’s. The supporters of 3 of the
leading contenders for the presidency
in 1824 (Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay,
and John Quincy Adams) boycotted
the Dem-Reps’ congressional caucus.
William H. Crawford became the
caucus nominee at a meeting
attended by fewer then 1/3 of the
Dem-Rep Party’s members.
Caucuses
• Crawford ran a poor third in the
electoral college balloting in 1824,
and the reign of King Caucus at the
national level was ended. The caucus
system soon withered at the state and
local levels.
Nominating Conventions
• Nominating conventions consist of a
party’s members who meet in a local
caucus to pick candidates for local
offices and to select delegates to
represent them at a county
convention.
Nominating Conventions
• The delegates nominate candidates
for county offices and select
delegates to the next rung on the
convention ladder, usually the state
convention. The delegates from
county conventions pick nominees for
governor and other state-wide offices.
Delegates select its presidential and
vice-presidential candidates at the
national convention.
Nominating Conventions
• The first national convention to
nominate a presidential candidate
was held by a minor party, the AntiMasons, in Baltimore in 1831. By the
1840’s, conventions had become the
principal means for
making nominations
at every level in
American
politics.
Nominating Conventions
• In theory, the will of the party’s rank
and file membership is passed up
through each of its representative
levels. The weakness of the theory
pointed out flaws as party bosses
found ways to manipulate the
process. By playing with the selection
of delegates, usually at the local
levels, they soon dominated the entire
system.
Nominating Conventions
• By the 1870’s the convention system
was itself under attack as a major
source of evil in American politics. By
the 1910’s, the direct primary had
replaced the convention in most
states.
Primary Elections
• A direct primary is an intra-party
election. It is held within a party to
pick that party’s candidates for
general election.
• Wisconsin adopted the first state-wide
direct primary law in 1903.
Primary Elections
• In most states, state law requires that
the major parties use the primary to
choose their candidates for the U.S.
Senate and House of Reps, for
governorship and all other state
offices, and for most local offices as
well.
• There are 2 forms of direct primary: 1)
the closed primary and 2) the open
primary
Primary Elections
• The Closed Primary
• The closed primary is a nominating
election in which only declared party
members can vote. The party’s
primary is closed to all but those party
members. Today, 24 states provide for
the closed primary.
Primary Elections
• The Closed Primary
• Party membership is established by
registration. When voters go to polls
on primary election day, their names
are checked against the poll books
and each voter is handed the primary
ballot of the party in which they are
registered. The voter can mark only
that party’s ballot; they can vote only
in that party’s primary.
Primary Elections
• The Open Primary
• The open primary is a party’s
nominating election in which any
qualified voter can cast a ballot. It is
now found in 26 states.
Primary Elections
• The Open Primary
• When voters go to polls, they get a
ballot of each party holding a primary.
They receive ballots of the Rep and
the Dem parties. Then each voter
marks the ballot of the party in whose
primary they choose to vote.
Primary Elections
• The Open Primary
• In other primary states, a voter
must ask for the ballot of the party
in whose primary they want to
vote. That is, each voter must
make a public choice of party in
order to vote in the primary.
Petitions
• Nomination by
petition is used when
candidates for public
office are nominated
by means of petitions
signed by a certain
required number of
qualified voters in the
election district.
Petitions
• Nomination by petition is found most
widely at the local level, chiefly for
nonpartisan school posts and
municipal offices in medium-sized and
smaller communities. It is also the
process usually required by state law
for nominating minor party and
independent candidates.
Petitions
• Usually the higher the office and/or
the larger the constituency
represented by the office, the greater
the number of signatures needed for
nomination.