The highly competitive race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008 has highlighted the primary system and its shortcomings. Although the formal primaries begin in early February, candidate campaigning began in October 2007. This elongated primary season has been described as the "permanent campaign."

The financial cost of this current presidential primary for all the candidates in both major parties will reach a billion dollars, a record spending total. Several of the prominent candidates of both parties have passed up federal matching contributions in order to amass a larger campaign war chest, large enough to keep them in the race.

Obviously, money is the critical component which drives a competitive campaign. The current presumptive Republican presidential candidate, Sen. John McCain, came close to dropping out of the primary race prior to the Iowa caucus due to lack of campaign finances. The importance of money in campaigns is illustrated by then-candidate George Bush's amassing a campaign war chest of $60 million in 2000 prior to the primaries which allowed him to dominate the early races and thereby gain the nomination.

Beyond campaign financing, the most significant shortcoming of the presidential primaries is their structure throughout the 50 states and territories. It is a mishmash of caucuses, conventions, primaries and in some cases a combination of the abovementioned procedures. It was not until after the 1968 election that the nomination of presidential candidates was decided by the voters. Largely responsible for this was Hubert Humphrey's nomination by the Democratic convention without winning a single primary. Prior to this, state conventions and caucuses selected their nominees to be presented to the national nominating conventions.

For the better part of our history, presidential nominees were selected by party leaders and the party faithful. The Democratic Party opted for "proportional vote distribution" in their primaries, caucuses and conventions based upon the voter count statewide and in the congressional districts. The Republicans have retained the "winner takes all" primary which mirrors the electoral college principle in the general election.

A 51 percent vote in Republican state primaries provides the winner all the delegates in that state election. However, the Democratic winner only receives a percentage of the delegates based upon his or her winning percentage. For example, Sen. Hillary Clinton won the Texas primary by 5 percent of the votes but received only that percentage of the votes she obtained. Moreover, Texas has a following caucus and convention system which provided Sen. Barack Obama additional votes which allowed him to win Texas by five delegates.

Since 2000 there has been a rush by states to schedule their primaries as early as possible to play a prominent role in candidate selection. In late February at least 12 Southern states scheduled their primaries on the same day to gain great leverage in the candidate selection. This primary season both Michigan and Florida were penalized for jumping the gun (prior to the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary) and had their primaries nullified. Their role in the Democratic convention is still to be determined.

So what changes need to be made so that the presidential primaries can fully represent the will of voters? Campaign financing reform of the first order is badly needed; make the "open primary" (all eligible voters) the principal procedure for nominating presidential candidates; resolve the quadrennial scramble for primary scheduling by instituting a lottery to select election dates for the states within the country's regions; shorten the "permanent campaign" which is by far the longest nomination and election system among democratic nations. This factor alone is responsible for extensive financial costs.

The experiences of this current presidential primary system provide evidence that the "winner takes all" primary is favorable to the front-runner in securing the nomination. Conversely, the two Democratic front-runners are locked in a highly competitive battle to secure convention delegates. The Democratic Party choice to split the delegates on the basis of the popular vote in the primaries, caucuses and conventions prolongs the primary and makes it more difficult to select a nominee. This determination to have the delegate selection reflect the percentage of the votes cast needs to be revisited given the experiences of this primary election.

Robert N. Wells Jr. of Canton is Munsil Professor of Government Emeritus at St. Lawrence University.