New York, California, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Oregon, Indiana, Connecticut, Maryland, Arizona, and many other states have not yet held primaries or caucuses for the presidential race, and yet the media experts are in a rush to declare victors on both sides. This is what’s wrong with the approach used every four years. How can California and New York, never mind Delaware and Wisconsin, be superfluous to the outcome? It’s irrational to say “America” has decided—and unfortunate that so many candidates have already dropped out because Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina again were allowed to hog the front of the line. This system is crazy. New Hampshire should be 50th next time around. This is not a partisan argument either way; it’s just illogical and unfair time after time to grant voters in some parts of the country a heavier say in the outcome. There has got to be a way to change this.

I can’t believe the political culture allows this. To me, the lack of action verges on political malpractice among the parties, state and national officials, and federal election commission. It’s absurd that all the players simply fall in line each time around and go along with the demands of places like N.H. and Iowa that they deserve to be first because it’s a local custom like tapping the maple trees for sugar or harvesting the corn. These states have no “right” to be first all the time. And this time all the Southern states have voted before any state on the West Coast. What gives there? Make it a lottery. Find some way to shake up the order. Mix it up with various parts of the country voting on the same day like California, Iowa, Indiana, Alabama, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Maine. Then the next Tuesday make it Ohio, Washington, Louisiana, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Kentucky, Montana. Something like that. Do that every other Tuesday from February through May on seven Tuesdays. Seven times seven, plus one on the last round—and add Puerto Rico, D.C., Guam, and other islands and territories week by week.