After the 1972 McGovern-Fraser Commission paved the pathway for the country’s modern primary system, presidential nominees have been, more or less, decided before parties’ national conventions. This election cycle, the Democratic Party’s drama over its nominee has once again opened debate over whether conventions should go back to their roots and pick nominees, or if they should remain the decorative coronation events they’ve become over the past half-century.

The journey to how modern voters pick presidential nominees has been long and raucous. In the earliest days of the republic, there was little need for a calculated nomination process. The Founding Fathers were already esteemed by the public and organically stepped into the presidency, so Hillsdale College politics professor Joseph Postell explained, “You really didn’t need to nominate those people. They were already distinguished on their own.” For over 50 years after America’s founding, the country generally used a caucus system.