Democracy v. Primary Elections: Why primaries are undemocratic

RealClearPolitics - Election 2012 - Republican Vote Count:

Super Tuesday is over and the Republican primary process continues with Mr. Romney ahead in delegates and behind in the popular vote raising the obvious questions: Is the primary process democratic? Does it yield the candidate that represents the majority view?

The short common sense answers are no, the process is not democratic and it does not yield a candidate that represents the majority view.  The facts are simple enough.  After 22 primaries here are the results:

	Romney	Santorum	Gingrich	Paul	Total
Popular vote	3179444	1948574	1818413	896392	7842823
% Popular vote	41%	25%	23%	11%
Delegates	381	160	101	61	703
% Delegates	54%	23%	14%	9%

Some 59% of Republican primary voters want someone other than Mr. Romney yet these candidates have only 46% of the delegates.  Clearly not democratic, at least in-so-far as the delegate count doesn't reflect the popular vote.  Even more clearly, Mr. Romney doesn't represent the majority view.

There are several reasons for this.

Primaries are dominated by the most active party members.  These activist do not necessarily represent the party majority.  In the specific case of the Republican primaries it seems all but certain that the radical conservative and religious right are disproportionately active.

Three of these primaries are winner take all contest.  In particular, Florida with its 50 delegates distorts the results.  Winner take all election systems inherently lead to disparities between popular and electoral counts.

There are a number of other voting systems that are both more democratic and more likely to yield a representative candidate.  There's an interesting article here.

Some years ago Common Sense was at a large party and asked What was the last time you voted for a presidential candidate you actually supported as opposed to the least objectionable candidate?  The results were disheartening with most having to go back many many elections to find a candidate that they actually supported.

The central point here is that the system the political parties use to select candidates is seriously broken and Common Sense thinks it should be changed.