In the time it takes to read this story, the 2008 primary process will be completed. No, actually it won’t happen quite that fast, but with Iowa moving their caucuses up to January 3 and more than half of the nation’s states holding their primaries prior to Valentine’s Day, this will be both the earliest and shortest primary season in American history. And where is Ohio’s role is this process? With a March 4 primary date, Ohio will be reduced to affirming the results that have been decided by the voters in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and the 24 other states that will hold primaries or caucuses on February 5. If you are in one of the early primary states, and you have had presidential candidates and Fox News pollsters at your church suppers for the past 12 months, this may seem like a great system. But if you live in Ohio or any of the other states that have, in fact, been disenfranchised by the current primary system, you wonder if this system is fatally flawed.

How did we get to a system where some of our smallest states choose our Presidents? It hasn’t always been this way. In fact, prior to 1972, most states did not have primaries or caucuses at all. Instead, each state’s party leaders and elected officials chose the delegates to the party’s nominating conventions themselves, with little or no input from the rank and file party members. In the era when smoke-filled rooms took the place of the ballot box, political conventions were free-wheeling affairs where the actual business of choosing candidates took place. In 1924 the Democrats gathered in New York City’s Madison Square Garden to choose their nominee. After 10 days and 103 ballots, the delegates chose former congressman and U.S. Ambassador to Great Britain John W. Davis of West Virginia. Davis was the ultimate compromise candidate who had garnered just 2.8 percent of the votes in the first round of balloting. In the November election Davis won just 12 of 48 states. The 11 former Confederate states, that had been solidly Democratic since Reconstruction, and Oklahoma.

The turmoil surrounding the 1968 electoral campaign led to reforms in the nominating process. After President Lyndon Johnson stunned the nation by announcing that he would not run for re-election, the Democratic nomination was up for grabs. Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy won 11 of the 15 primaries that were contested on the Democratic side and Robert Kennedy won the California primary just hours before being gunned down by an assassin. But Vice-President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination at the Party’s contentious and violent convention in Chicago. Humphrey did not win or even campaign in any primary elections and did not announce his intention to run for President until March of 1968.

After the 1968 elections, the Democratic National Committee appointed South Dakota Senator George McGovern to chair a committee to change the rules for selecting presidential candidates. By 1972 the Democratic National Committee mandated that all states hold primaries or caucuses to select delegates. Because many states enacted the Democrats' reforms into law, the Republican Party followed suit, and by 1980 three-quarters of both party’s delegates were chosen in open primaries.

The reforms of the nominating process have made the process more open, but with Iowa and New Hampshire always having the first choice to narrow down the field, has it made the process fairer? According to the 2000 Census, African-Americans made up 12.3 percent of the U.S. population. In Iowa, just 2.1 percent of the population is African-American. In New Hampshire, the number shrinks to .7 percent. While Hispanics are 12.5 percent of the population overall, they are just 2.8 and 1.7 percent of these states' populations.

Jimmy Carter’s meteoric rise in 1976 from peanut farmer, to one-term Georgia governor, to 39th President was fueled by early successes in Iowa and New Hampshire, thus cementing both states' place in presidential politics. Although New Hampshire had hosted the “first-in-the-nation primary” since 1952, the attention Carter’s victory brought to the Granite State compelled state lawmakers to mandate New Hampshire's place on the electoral calendar, passing an act requiring New Hampshire to hold their primary seven days before any other state votes.

So while Ohio was pivotal to the 2004 Presidential Election, don’t expect to see candidates knocking on your door or holding babies at the local union hall anytime soon. If recent history is any indicator, both the Democrats and Republicans will have decided on their 2008 nominees weeks before Ohio’s voters cast their ballots. The nominating process may be more transparent than it was prior to 1968, but unless you live in one of the chosen “early” states, you have traded the smoke filled rooms of campaigns past for the corn fields of Iowa and the town halls of New Hampshire.