Instead of selecting delegates to the convention by primary, that year the Republicans held caucuses and Congressional district conventions before the state Republican convention. The delegates that went to the national convention were selected at the state convention.
There have been various proposals for having 8-10 ‘regional’ dates, with about 5-6 adjacent states having their caucuses/primary on the same date. (The only one that really succeeded was started in the late 1980’s, Super Tuesday, when about 9 Southern States set the same date.)
But both Iowa & New Hampshire object strongly to any changes.
For good (to them) reason – these are msjor economic boosts to these states.
Both are small, largely agricultural states – not that busy in the winter. But the sudden influx of campaign staff workers takes up most of the rental cars in the state, fills hotel rooms that would otherwise sit empty in an Iowa winter, generates news for their local media (and advertising). Lots of places are rented for public meetings & events, food is catered, etc. Those 2 states make lots of money from their early spot in esidential campaigns, in addition to all the attention.
Election officials are well aware of the likely turnout for Primary/General/Special elections, and adjust the number of election judges hired for the day accordingly. And in locations (like here in Minnesota) where people use paper ballots, they adjust the number printed in advance based on expected turnout. Both of those allow them to reduce costs for low-turnout elections.
No, it’s completely different. In the UK a parliamentary candidate will be chosen by the local branch of the party. This could involve a ballot open to all paid-up party members, or selection by a committee of party officials, or some combination of the two things but, either way, everyone involved is an active member of the local party, there will rarely be more than two or three hundred people involved, and mostly many fewer. Whereas in the US pretty well anyone who is interested to do so can vote in the primary; they don’t need to be members of or activists for the party. There is in theory nothing to stop someone voting in the primary of the party they oppose, and voting for a candidate they consider unelectable, in order to benefit the candidate of the party they support.
I need a cite that Minnesota changes the number of election judges for primaries. The election judge guide doesn’t indicate that.
If there is a difference, then it’s state-dependent, because in New York all elections of all kinds, primaries and regular, have exactly the same set-up.
Your link is to the Secretary of State’s info – that’s a general guideline; elections are actually done by the local County or City Clerks’ office. The best cite I can give is the Minneapolis Elections site, where they say “Each precinct is assigned four to 12 judges, depending on the needs of the election.”
But I know it is done that way from 20-some years of being an official observer at polling places in the City. The number clearly varies by election & expected voter turnout.
Except that Iowa isn’t. It’s much whiter than the US on average, more evangelical and the largest city is only 200,000 people. It’s in no way representative of the rest of the US.
The short answer is that it isn’t a vote. It’s part of the process of choosing a party’s candidate, not actually voting for public office. The rights of participation in that process aren’t the same as actual voting.
These are ultimately political questions, not legal ones.
The primary system came about because the public felt their “right” to select their preferred candidate was being trampled by the pols in the smoke-filled rooms.
So the public fired up enough protest that eventually the pols had to answer with the current system, plus/minus some incremental changes since the big changeover.
If enough people get worked up enough about IA & NH filtering out candidates the rest of the US would prefer, the system will change. The legal system may provide some prods in the back to keep things moving forward, but the actual impetus will be wholly political.
In some Bizarro future world I could imagine Iowa as the last bastion of a wholly white, wholly Presbyterian, wholly reactionary culture totally alien to the rest of the US. As such if its primary / caucus came first it might have the same result as Iran’s “Guardian Council” (wiki): an initial filter that 100% of candidates for any / all national offices must pass through which ensures that only candidates orthodox enough by their standards ever see the light of day.
If that ever started to really happen you can be assured the other 49 states would put a stop to it pronto.
Exactly. The thing you might note is that in most representative democracies, the process by which parties choose their candidates is opaque to you as an average voter. The primary season in the US can be seen as an extra level of choice, albeit one that is also a three ring circus. Foreign readers should realize that the primary process may also apply to candidates for lower offices. But since those are within a state, inconsistencies between the way states manage their primaries for, say, senate or gubernatorial candidates, aren’t an issue.
(The fact that we effectively vote directly on our head of government separate from our representatives is also odd. OK, we vote on a set of electors pledged to vote for a particular candidate in the electoral college. Let’s not go there in this thread. I’m not sure it’s a good idea, and it wasn’t exactly what the framers of the constitution had in mind. It’s what the states turned it into by deciding to just run elections to choose their electors.)
Keep in mind too that in the real world, the winners in Iowa have included Ed Muskie, Dick Gephardt, Tom Harkin, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum. The Iowa caucus by no means anoints the eventual winner, and plenty of candidates go on to success after losing there.
One reason the government has intervened in the selection process to mandate primary elections is that in some places, the selection was, or still is, the de facto election because one party dominates the region.
It’s precisely the fact that Iowa isn’t really the Great Filter that some folks fear which lets it remain the first primary state despite its unrepresentative nature. If it ever became a Great Filter it’d be bypassed.
Which was much the point I made here http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=19043002&postcount=113. Whichever states go first, be they representative or not, they’ll have a disproportionate effect on the back-of-the-pack no-hopers. Simply because that’s the first time actual voter reality intrudes on all the projections, polls, and wishful thinking. Of both candidates and their backers. Their effect on the front runners is much more nuanced.
Such a bizarro future IA and NH world wouldn’t come to pass such that candidates would drop out after a poor showing in a radical state. Say in 100 years, the residents of those two states are 98% members of the “Hitler was too nice of a guy” wing of a party. Suppose we have our current crop of candidates, but David Duke wins 70% of the vote and the rest of the candidates are in single digits.
Nobody would drop out because the candidates could look at polling in states ahead of IA and NH and see that the HWTNOAG contingent wasn’t represented in the other states. The reason why the O’Malleys and the Huckabees drop out after IA is that IA is not so radically different from the rest of the US that they expect the same poor result elsewhere.
In a future bizarro IA and NH, they wouldn’t see those same tea leaves and would not drop out.
I missed the 2000 caucuses due to working the late shift. My wife went, but found herself quite distracted by the 2-year-old she had in tow. She might have had to miss entirely if she had to handle 2 or 3 wee ones.
I can imagine numerous circumstances beyond work requirements which could force a parent or other busy person to sit out the caucuses, when they could have otherwise voted in a primary.
The caucuses are cute 'cuz they’re weird. You even have to love the civic-mindedness of them (having to commit to being there, trying to persuade others to vote your way). But they are not a particularly fair representation of the will of the people. (Also, all those delegates are not particularly ‘committed’- I believe that there are lots of opportunities for changes as things wend their way to the conventions.)