I see the primary/Caucus season as the parties nomination process, many see it as round one of selecting a president. Caucuses make a ton of sense to get the best results for the parties, primaries make the most sense if you see it as round one. As for open primaries I don't understand why the parties award any delegates for something that can be heavily altered by the opposing party. As for the EC versus popular vote of course it has come into play more then once in about 60 elections but for the most part it makes no difference. I can live with the popular vote, but it would create such an east coast bias I don't think even Democrats would be happy with the results, we could probably smooth out the #'s to make it to a more per capita basis but i do think it's important to try to make candidates win across the country rather then allow them to win big regionally and coast in the rest of the country.