The current system is undemocratic as it gives undue influence to the early states  As most primaries only serve to decide the number of delegates who will be bound to vote for a particular candidate at a party’s national convention, a presidential hopeful will be able to ignore contests later in the election cycle if he has already secured a majority of delegates. The staggered nature of primaries under the status quo allows candidates to determine when their lead has become unassailable. As a consequence, candidates will refrain from mounting campaigns in states that poll later in the election cycle. The later a state votes, the less chance it has of influencing the size of a candidate’s majority.  In 2000 and 2004, by the time New York – the third most populous state in the union – voted, both main parties had, in effect, selected their candidate. If that isn’t the perfect example of an undemocratic system, then it would be difficult to think of what might be.  The current system discriminates against lesser known candidates who are already at a disadvantage. The advantage of running all primaries during a single day in February is that it would allow lesser known candidates the time to introduce themselves to the nation. A promising but little known candidate can easily be taken out of contention during the Iowa, New Hampshire or South Carolina primaries. Running a single primary in February or March would give unknown candidates a full three months to mount their own media campaigns and to build up the press contacts and public profile that established candidates already enjoy. A single primary election would also do a great deal to help with a more even distribution of donations between the candidates.  The primaries effectively function as part of the general election campaign; they are certainly central to selecting the two people from whom the eventual winner will emerge. It is therefore damaging and deceptive to continue to treat them as a purely party-political issue that has no relevance for voters who are not closely involved with the republican and democrat campaign machines.  A final argument concerns the role of political capital and states’ influence over candidates’ activities. Campaigning compels candidates to offer party members and voters in states incentives in return for their endorsement. These may take the form of pledges to address local issues, to provide funding to public projects or to pursue policies at a national level that are beneficial to certain states. However, states that are excluded from the primary process when a candidate secures a majority of delegates will be unable to win promises or concessions from a presidential hopeful. This creates inequalities in the ability of individual states to influence federal policy and governance, reducing the cohesiveness of the union as a whole.