A firehouse primary, also called a firehouse caucus or "unassembled caucus", is a term sometimes used in the United States to describe a primary election run by a political party, not a government, to select the party's candidates for a later general election.[1] Firehouse primaries were originally held in public buildings such as firehouses.
United States
The term has been used principally for elections in the U.S. state of Virginia.
For the 2020 Democratic party presidential primaries, Alaska, Hawaii, Kansas, and North Dakota conducted firehouse primaries largely by mail. North Dakota used the term firehouse caucus for its event.[2] A closed, ranked-choice firehouse primary will be conducted for the 2024 Democratic presidential primary in Missouri due to the abolition of state-run presidential primaries by the Missouri General Assembly.[3]
Because firehouse primaries are held with more limited locations and time frames than state-run primaries, and party officials have more control over who the candidates are, firehouse primaries have been criticized as relatively undemocratic by some American commentators.[4] On the other hand, firehouse primaries allow the party to use distinctive voting methods, especially ranked-choice voting, to nominate candidates.
Elsewhere
Firehouse primaries are the norm for the selection of candidates for public office in political parties outside of the United States and some parts of South America. The selection of candidates to compete for political officer on behalf of a political party in European nations is usually done by paying party members or party officials, or a mix of both, often without the use of any public infrastructure or direct funding. It is unusual for there to be any particularly strict or explicit legislation governing how parties can select their candidates. As such, a term like 'party selection', 'party election' or another local term is more likely to be used than 'firehouse primary'. Most countries do not have a system for voters to publicly register as identifying with a particular political party as in the United States which makes open primaries more difficult, though not impossible, to hold.
References
- ^ Firehouse primary at Taegan Goddard's political dictionary
- ^ Josh Putnam. North Dakota Democrats Plan to Hold March 10 Firehouse Caucuses, FrontloadingHQ blog, March 13, 2019
- ^ "Missouri political parties scrambling due to primary election law change". spectrumlocalnews.com. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
- ^ Roger Chesley. Undemocratic way of selecting Democratic Party nominees. The Virginian-Pilot, Mar 1, 2017
This page was last edited on 16 November 2023, at 06:28