Choosing the first primary voters by lottery

Early voters in the Democratic and Republican Presidential primaries have a tremendous influence over the final selection of the parties' candidates. These parties should select these early voters through lotteries.

For example, the Republicans could randomly pick 200 Republican voters to be the first people to cast their ballots for the Republican nominee. The candidate who gets the most of these 200 votes could be given one convention delegate. But these 200 voters real influence would be on generating favorable publicity for the candidate(s) they favor.

Each of these 200 voters could have a chance to talk with all the candidates. Perhaps the Republican party could pay these voters a month's salary in return for each voter spending 100 hours or so studying the candidates. Because each of their votes would be important, these 200 voters would be far more likely than ordinary primary voters to put significant time and effort into their election decisions.

This post was inspired by Stumbling and Mumbling's idea to select members of the British House of Lords by lottery.