I braved barbarically low temperatures, attack dogs guarding people’s homes atop steep, icy inclines and perhaps the most intimidating obstacle of all: New Hampshire voters. I knocked on doors. I called. I held signs. I joined the most nonsensical, incongruous part of the modern democratic process; I was a primary election campaign volunteer.

Imagine a place where powerful political figures are knocking on your door, inviting you to breakfast and most amazingly of all, listening to your every concern and pet issue. What would you do?

Would you share a cup of joe with Joe Lieberman? Would you grab a bagel with John Kerry or fresh baked cookies with Howard Dean? How would you evaluate each candidate, considering representatives of and/or the candidates themselves are available essentially 24 hours each day? Would you ask about key issues, such as the economy and the environment, or would you just inquire about the next free meal?

“I was going to vote for Joe Lieberman, but I met John Edwards and he was so much better looking in person,” a New Hampshire voter and Edwards supporter told me.

I asked her which issues are important to her, and how that influenced her decision.

“Health care is vitally important to me because I work in the industry, but it was ultimately the way Edwards presented himself that swayed me over to his side.”

Had she looked at Lieberman’s or Edward’s health care plan? “No.”

“What are you going to have with the bagels?” Frank, another New Hampshire voter asked me when I called to invite him to breakfast with Senator Joe Lieberman. I told him cream cheese.

“If you can get lox I’ll consider coming,” Frank said.

The most important issue for Frank was social security, but he preferred smoked salmon to politics and wasn’t familiar with the candidates’ positions on that issue.

This tiny New England state, according to the U.S. Census, is home to around one million residents and a little more than 800,000 registered voters. It shapes national politics every four years in a manner larger states like California and New York could only dream of. Additionally, New Hampshire is disproportionately republican; the state is represented by four members of the GOP in congress. The Granite State is also unique from many other states because it holds an open primary, meaning independent voters can participate in normally closed primary elections.

So why is one of the most influential political events in the Democrats’ presidential nomination process, the first in the national primary, held in a tiny republican state? Ironically, this process is intended to foster democracy. Instead, it inspires pandemonium.

Once upon a time, parties selected presidential nominees during conventions. The infamous smoke-filled rooms were places where state delegates would pick the nominee best suited for the national election. This system changed in the 1960s when chaotic town hall meetings populated with inattentive voters replaced confidential conferences among party elites. Democrats and Republicans hoped to reform the nomination process by making it more egalitarian.

What neither party probably counted on was the New Hampshire phenomenon. In a rational world, New Hampshire’s early primary would be just a footnote to Super Tuesday, when several states including Massachusetts, New York and Georgia hold their primaries. Super Tuesday is clearly a better indicator of national sentiment than the tiny, racially and culturally homogenous New Hampshire.

However, the media, hardly a rational organization to begin with, somehow decided that New Hampshire was the most important indicator for candidates’ success. Thus today around a million people get to shape candidates’ issue platforms for the rest of the country.

To make matters worse, New Hampshire voters don’t take their responsibility seriously. As late as the week before the Democratic primary, undecided voters polled into the double digits; this is simply inexcusable. Factoring in the access New Hampshire residents have to information about the candidates, their inability to make an informed decision by the last week of the election indicates a group of voters who are either unwilling or unable to synthesize political data.

New Hampshire voters sometimes don’t even understand why they like the candidates they vote for. Perhaps the most enduringly popular candidate to win the Granite State is Republican Senator John McCain. My good friend Ken Campbell, a campaign volunteer for McCain during his bid for the nomination in 2000, said he encountered a great deal of apathetic and uninformed voters even among the Arizona congressman’s supporters.

“Most of the people who even bothered to answer the doors said they hadn’t decided yet,” Campbell said. “A lot of people were concerned about issues like Social Security, but they didn’t have any idea how the candidates stood [on those issues].”

The commercial news media can’t be expected to stop covering the New Hampshire primary as if it in any way represents national sentiment, let alone the typical views of the Democratic Party. The mass media hasn’t made a rational, let alone altruistic decision since Watergate, and they can’t be expected to provide decent political coverage now.

So, I am imploring the state of New Hampshire to step aside and give another state, or hopefully group of states, the opportunity to be first in the nation. One million voters deciding the nomination for around 100 million nationally registered voters, is not democratic, especially for the Democrats.

Rachel Smith is a Collegian columnist.