Pignanelli: It's springtime — a season that prompted humans to perform various cultural rites over the millennia. The fun and less dangerous activities (i.e. coloring eggs) is a 4,000-year-old tradition we maintain with glee. However, our society has abandoned building bonfires and sacrificing animals to celebrate the warmer weather. Our state needs to eliminate another outdated biannual spring ritual: the neighborhood party caucuses (scheduled again this Tuesday).

Every two years, the political parties schedule meetings for loyal activists to elect delegates and officers to attend county and state conventions. This is a holdover from the Progressive Era, established to thwart the power of party bosses by enhancing the grassroots representation of individual members. These objectives may have been accomplished for most of last century, but for the 21st century the caucus is an outdated aberration of democracy. A handful of delegates can determine the fate of the candidate. Special-interest groups and extremists from the parties stack the meetings to dominate the proceedings. The dynamics provide a soapbox for the political fringe in selecting delegates, with humorous results. GOP delegates oftentimes must ensure they sleep with a copy of the Constitution under the pillow while Democrats tout their ecological sound vehicles and recycling habits. Further, the meetings are less frequently held in people's homes, and now conducted by legislative district, thereby eliminating the "neighborhood" sentiment. Modern lifestyles prevent the broad-based participation in the evening caucuses. Thus, most states have dumped the local precinct system, allowing for a primary election to determine the party's flag bearers. Necessary barriers to candidacy (i.e. higher filing fees, sponsor signatures) weed out the less serious candidates. A primary allows easy access for a broad spectrum of interests, not just hard-core activists, in determining candidates for the general election.

A mandatory primary also questions the need for another ancient activity: the party convention. Modern technology provides

unprecedented opportunities for people and movements to communicate. Stuffing the normal convention activities of candidate selection, platform development and officials' speeches into a Saturday event is inefficient. Further, most politically minded citizens cannot participate in the time-consuming rigors that a convention delegate requires.