John Oliver takes a steely look at U.S. system for selecting presidential nominees, pleads for reform

On Sunday's Last Week Tonight, John Oliver took a long, hard look at the byzantine system of primaries and caucuses America uses to pick its presidential candidates. And maybe it takes an Englishman to explain just how crazy the American system is. Oliver touched on the ongoing race between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and the brouhaha at the Nevada Democratic convention, but that's not what his report is proximately about. He started with some history.

In the years after the riotous 1968 Democratic convention, when party leaders picked Hubert Humphrey, "both parties reformed their processes to give their rank-and-file members more of a say, but many of the details were left up to state leaders — which might help explain why we have such an erratic clusterf--k every four years," Oliver said. "Almost every part of this process is difficult to defend." He specially cited the Democratic process in Washington State and GOP decision to assign at-large delegates in Pennsylvania. "If Dancing With the Stars had a system where instead of voting directly for Paige VanZant or Ginger Zee, you had to vote for Doug or Karen to vote on your behalf, neither of whom will tell you which dancer they prefer, there would be riots in the streets," he said.

"To be fair to both parties, they're basically private clubs; they can set their own rules," Oliver noted. "But if you play by a system of complex, opaque rules that almost nobody understands, and that you could use to your advantage — even if you don't — you are going to alienate voters ... It would clearly behoove both parties to take a long, hard look at this, because they actually got lucky this time." That's because each party's likely nominee won the most votes in the primaries, this time. And it's too late to change the system this year, Oliver said, because "the middle of the game is the worst possible time to change the rules." But "unfortunately, we only get angry about the primary process during the primary process, when it's impacting the candidate we care about," he added, and to see his solution — and his entire case for wholesale reform — watch the video below. (There is some slightly NSFW content.) Peter Weber

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