For a century or so…

…from the mid 19th Century to the mid 20th, presidential candidates were not picked by primary elections but by conventions of party establishment delegates. There was a lot of horsetrading that went on at those conventions in what the press liked to call smoke-filled rooms.

The final crack in the traditional convention process came…at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who won the most primary votes, lost to fellow Minnesota Sen. Hubert Humphrey in the delegate count. Humphrey had not run as an announced candidate in the 17 primaries, and only 38 percent of convention delegates were chosen by voters in primaries. (Republicans picked just 34 percent of delegates in primaries.)

When I partook of Democratic Party politics in the 1970s, we held county conventions to pick delegates to a state convention, which in turn picked delegates to the national convention — but those delgates were bound to vote for the winner of the state primary for a certain number of ballots. I forget how many (and it varied from state to state), but the process never in my recollection went that far.

Now, of course, we do primaries nationally but the two major parties keep their fingers in the pie by appointing "super delegates" — party officials who are voting delegates at their conventions but are not bound by the primary results.

You can read more about that history here.