Analysis of the First post-Citizens United Presidential Election

[bobfitz14]

Originally Posted by VulchR

Like the right not to have some government agency snooping on all my electronic communications?

Oh wait they still do it don't they
/sarcasm

[MadeTheSwitch]

Originally Posted by Ugg

On another note, why is there such a long lead up to the elections? It seems as though it is more or less a two year process. That's insane. It may have made sense in the age of the railroad, but in the internet age, I would think that 1 January of the year of the election gives more than enough time. That's 10 months to announce, get nominated and run a campaign. Such a short time frame would mean only so much money could be raised, only so much could be spent and only so many attack ads could be run.

Well, the first year is just for the primary process to work. Campaigning has to start the year before simply because the first primaries start in Dec/Jan time frame. Now if every state primary was held to one single date in June, then the primary run could start in January of the Presidential election year. But states would never go for that because they all try to leapfrog each other in order to be more "relevant" in the election process. The candidates wouldn't go for it either as they would have a hard time visiting every state they needed to right before primary election day. Yes there is the internet and TV, but candidates still like to get out there and the USA is still a big country. It takes time to visit all those locations.