What’s interesting about the Liberal leadership race is that we haven’t a clue what the unelected delegates will do. This group includes MPs, former candidates, “insiders” and so on. This is not a very democratic process to be sure.

This raises the question as to how democratic a process to elect a party leader ought to be?

In many of the United States pre-election “primaries” are used to elect candidates for many public offices including Congressmen, Senators, Governors and the like. This system is in almost universal practice for electing delegates to the quadrennial National Convention that selects the presidential nominee. On the obverse side of the coin is the UK where a leader can, under some circumstances (the process is not the same for all parties or situations) be named by the party caucus, the theory being that those in the ranks ought to decide who the general will be.

The fundamental difference in political culture in the United States is that they don’t have “a” Republican” or “Democrat” party – they have 50 of each and each, under its own policy, selects delegates.

The great advantage of a “primary” system is that the public get into the act by simply registering their party choice and then voting. Some States, notably California, the biggest, allow all to vote for each party’s delegates.

This may be the most democratic way to do things but it may not suit Canadian parties which have “national” parties divided amongst provinces and territories as they please with delegates under scrutiny of the party brass. This scrutiny is happening to Bob Rae as his BC delegates have had their credentials called into question.

What about the phone in method used by the BC Liberals? When Gordon Campbell was elected, the convention, all the duller for the process, had to wait for the votes to be telephoned in. I’ve not seen much debate on this method which may mean that the Liberals are content with this system.

I think that the “primary” system is best but that isn’t what we have nor are we likely to see it adopted, at least not by the major parties.

In the meantime know that the Liberal leadership convention is impossible to predict because over half the delegates have not had to express their opinions.