Iowans: Do you like your caucuses?

Somehow I have participated in (counting fingers…) five presidential elections without ever hearing a description of the Iowa caucuses.

Well, now I have heard. All day the news has been carefully explaining it.

Here http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=450048&highlight=caucus*

Spavined Gelding says he/she is a caucus chairman and you have to show up by 6:30 and probably stay till 10.

Aaaahhhh! That sounds crazy! and crazy making. and hostile to single mothers…and fathers… and everybody.

Do y’all (southern expression, 2nd person plural) like these things? Has anybody ever said “Guys, let’s make this a whole lot easier and do a primary where you can come anytime or even vote absentee?” I always had this impression of Iowans as practical, common-sense type folks. Explain yourselves :slight_smile:

My Iowan parents are, as I type this, near to being on their way out the door to the caucus, where they intend to caucus for Bill Richardson. I happened to call them today and they both felt it was important to participate even with the drawbacks inherent in the format.

My state primaries have always been so late that my opinion has had absolutely no bearing on anything whatsoever.

:smack: Doh! Just realized that Iowans are all too busy to answer tonight.

We (Washington state) have similar caucuses (actually we have a bizarre hybrid caucus/primary system that doesn’t really make sense, but is somewhat explained here)

I actually rather like them. You do get a chance to find out what people are thinking (“Candidate X? Really? Why?”), debate, discuss, consider positions that you may not have considered before. Minds get changed (yours and your neighbors) and decisions get made.

It feels very much like you’re part of the process. Not that voting doesn’t, but this almost more so.

Now, I have to make sure I’m free on February 9.

No, not really, it’s too complicated. I think the Democrats should have training sessions for the precinct chairpersons, like the County Auditors have for the election officials.

There were lots of questions, and we had a booklet to refer to, but we also had people saying “We’re supposed to do it this way” and others saying “No, it’s this way.” The precinct chair was new, and things could have been smoother.

For example, I was told tonight by the former Precinct Chair that everything had to be finished by 8 p.m. WTF? Where does it say that? He insisted, dem’s the rules. We barely made that deadline. If there had been resolutions to discuss, we wouldn’t have made it.

By 7:50, we had three viable preference groups of almost equal number. We’re allotted four delegates, so one preference group is going be able to send two delegates. I think we should have been able to announce the results to the whole group and see if anyone wanted to re-align. Maybe the non-viable Biden people who’d gone to Clinton would have preferred Obama or Edwards. But they didn’t get the chance to rethink it.

It was nice seeing everybody, eating Hillary’s cookies and sandwiches and chatting, but I’d much prefer a primary.

I’m confused. You elect delegates, like the electoral college and they all go somewhere and vote?

You had to ask. I don’t know what happens next. I’m assuming that tonight’s caucus winner stays the winner, and that the county, district, and state conventions are to take care of other party business.

But I’m going to check. If anyone knows, please speak up.

My understanding is that the numbers coming out of the caucuses don’t change when we get to the larger conventions, but I could be wrong.

I just keep thinking of it as a babysitting nightmare. Usually I would leave the kids with my husband…but I want him to be counted too…so perhaps I could swap with a friend…except everyone needs to be at their precinct at the same time?

Most of the babysitters I could get would want to be out voting. I would be competing with every other voting family for the two high schoolers I know.

I know exposing my children to the democratic process is educational, but I’m afraid if I took my three boys (8, 6, almost 2) out around bedtime on a frigid night to a very noisy place with cookies, I would be doing my chosen candidate a disservice by driving other caucusers to huddle in a different corner far away.

Well, yeah. That’s what EVERY state does. You don’t elect candidates, silly! You vote to seat certain delegates at the National Convention of your party. Those delegates have various rules regarding whether they have to vote for a certain candidate or can change their mind. Usually, it has something to do with the degree of “landslidedness” the nomination is expected to be. If some candidate runs away with the competition, the delegates all just vote for them to show some solidarity in the party.

There were a decent number of little kids at the caucus, actually.

Personally, I prefer a primary. I think the caucus is a nice idea, but with a 400 person precinct, it’d be faster, more accurate, and more efficient just to have a primary – not to mention that I think that the caucus is discriminatory against the poor (who are more likely to have crappy night jobs… I could never caucus before due to work commitments).

It was definitely interesting and exciting, but, I don’t think it’s the best system for fairness and it definitely took way longer than necessary.

The local news here has been reporting Obama with a substantial, but not commanding, lead (37% to Clinton at about 31% and Edwards at 30%). I’m happy with how things have turned out tonight; Obama did better than I expected.

I checked. I was wrong. Delegates are chosen again at the county, district, and state level, and according to Wiki, the winner of the caucuses might not be the winner at state, where national delegates are chosen.

See? It’s too complicated!

I went for the first time tonight, and hated it. There were over 400 people crammed into a very small elementary school gym that was probably rated by the fire marshall for no more than 200. I was actually ready to call the fire department and report them, because so many people were crushing into the gym at the last minute that I was sincerely afraid for our safety. The registration area outside the gym was also too small for the number of people there.

Then the people caucusing for the two front-runners (Obama and Hillary) were pushed out into the hallways. We sat there for over an hour. We heard no speeches. We were privy to no deal-making. We just sat until we were counted for the last time and dismissed. Fortunately, it “only” took 2 hours.

I think a primary would be way more efficient and effective, if this is the way caucuses are going to be run.

Was there an old couple there who caucused for Richardson?

On the Democratic side the precinct caucus appoints delegates to the county convention. The county convention sends delegates to the state convention and the state convention sends delegates to the national convention. The information that is sent into the state organization on caucus night is the number of people at the caucus and the number of delegates to the county convention for each candidate, not a head-count of votes for each candidate. The percentage of vote that comes out in the news is not based on a head-count but on the number of delegates to the county convention selected by the supporters of each candidate.

For instance, in my little caucus there were 28 participants. In the end 22 went with Edwards and 6 went with Richardson. The mathematics sent two delegates to the county convention for Edwards and one for Richardson. I suppose the information at the “election central” in Des Moines showed that Edwards got 66.6% of the Union Township vote and Richardson got 33.3%. The raw numbers, however, are that Edwards got 78% of the vote.

What the Iowa caucus does, however, is to test the candidates and subject them to an ordeal in grass roots electioneering that culls the herd. If a presidential want-to-be survives the Iowa experience they can probably stand up for the long run. Like the wolves on the edge of a herd of game, we Iowans pull down the weak, sick and crippled, leaving the strong and swift to carry on.

Hey Otto, I was caucusing for Richardson with an older couple. She told me it was her first time although she’d lived in Iowa all her life. Sound like them? I didn’t get their names, though.

Minnesota also has a caucus. I enjoyed it (but then I’m young and childless). At the precinct level, at least, more time was spent drafting and voting on resolutions to be in the party’s platform than voting for a candidate. At my precinct, we didn’t assign delegates at the precinct level–that was done at the county or state senate district level. I went to my state senate district caucus, but didn’t like that as much. At that level, where the state caucus delegates were chosen, more professional politicians were involved (the mayor of Minneapolis was one of the delegates from my caucus) and made me feel less a part of the process.