Their skiff'd have ever received has to be a bike when I was younger, a pedal bike.

It was a sort of slick little road bike and I remember it was all like it was so it was all wrapped up

but it was so obvious what it was obviously because nothing shaped like a bike and had a little ribbon on it

and I was so gas. For that was a life changer and I'm still sort of big on cycling around my area now

so for that one change really a little.

Join in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks.

Hi everybody and welcome to Intelligent Squared. I am John Don Van and something I heard multiple times during my career as a foreign correspondent

living sometimes in other democracies not always but often from people who lived in those democracies was

hey you Americans why do your election campaigns go on for so long? So yeah by comparison with Canada's election campaigns which usually start and finish in a couple of months or

Britain's which only go on for about six weeks or israel's where candidates are actually barred from campaigning on TV until two weeks before election day.

We are in a system where candidates are already declared and spending TV money and roaming the state fair in Iowa a full year out from election day when they still have all of those primaries yet to get through.

So yes these primaries while there are several reasons our campaigns run longer than I think anywhere else one of the reasons is the primaries which begin the winter before the summer before the election in the fall

and then there are all of those primaries receipts in congress now the constitution doesn't say anything about primaries so why do they exist and are they actually a net plus for our democracy.

Well smart people actually disagree about that and therefore we are going to debate right now this question are primary elections ruining democracy.

We have two guests to debate this question each expert in how our elections work each having given serious thought to this question Elaine K Mark who is at Brookings in the Harvard Kennedy School and Jed Ober former director of Democracy International

currently serving as chief of staff to a member of congress both of our debaters have actually participated in primary elections themselves behind the scenes taking part in committees and campaigns alike.

So Elaine K Mark and Jed Ober thanks so much for joining us on intelligence squared.

Hey thanks for having me thanks so much john appreciate it so to let people know who's a yes and who's a no on this question let's just make this official I'll let you go first to lean on the question our primary elections ruining democracy are you a yes or a no.

I'm a yes and Jed Ober that makes you the open let's make it official are you a yes or no our primary elections ruining democracy.

I am definitely a no john and I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this all right well let's get started and we'll go back to you Elaine because your your yes is more challenging I would say to the status

quo so let's have you go first and tell us why you are arguing yes primary elections are ruining democracy well okay this is a controversial position I understand and it is definitely not a mainstream position.

The United States is the only country in the world that uses primaries exclusively to nominate their leaders and the problem with using primaries which in the United States we've only used for presidents

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