A primary and a caucus

Last week, the Star Tribune Editorial Board endorsed legislation that would create a full-day presidential primary on the first Tuesday in February of presidential election years, while authorizing political parties to convene caucuses in the state's more than 4,000 precincts after the polls close on the same day. Here are some StarTribune.com readers' reactions to the idea:

The caucus should be restricted to those who voted in the primary. There is no violation of secret ballot at all, merely an already public list of those who voted. Further, it will mitigate attempts to stack the deck during the caucus.

•••

To win a primary, a candidate needs: (1) a bunch of money and (2) television ads. To win a caucus, a candidate needs: (1) a coherent message and (2) volunteers to spread that message. The caucus system is more democratic because it helps mitigate the influence of big money in politics. There are certainly some things we can do to reform the process. For example, individual candidates should not be able to blanket the caucus site with their campaign posters. More than half of the complaints from last year came from voters who couldn't find their caucus rooms. Of course most of them would have found their room easily if "Clinton '08" signs hadn't been covering up the directions. We can solve these problems with simple reforms. We do no good to trash our entire system.

•••

Get rid of precinct caucuses entirely. [Democratic Sen. candidate Al] Franken and [Republican Rep. Michele] Bachmann are the result of the precinct caucus system. I say go completely to a primary system.

•••

A caucus is a great place to discuss issues and debate resolutions, but it is not a forum to vote for a party's presidential nominee. It's time for Minnesota to embrace a presidential primary.

•••

Primaries are useless. ... Do you remember whom the Independence Party endorsed in 2008 in the Sixth District? It was Democrat El Tinklenberg. After the endorsement, Bob Anderson ran unopposed in the Independence primary, since Tinklenberg also received the DFL endorsement . Anderson received roughly 10 percent of the general election vote, more than the margin of victory for Michele Bachmann ... This was a case where the primary system thwarted the will of the Independence Party and even the majority of voters, since the majority voted against Bachmann.