Why We Shouldn’t Give a Damn Who Wins the Iowa Caucuses

Regardless of which candidate wins in Iowa tonight, it's going to be close and we really don't know who will be victorious. For that reason this post is not a jab in the ribs of a particular candidate, so please don't don't take it that way. My problem is with the Iowa caucus process. There are number ways in which states pick their choices to be the Presidential nominees. Several states use the caucus system, but I view Iowa's caucus procedures as particularly problematic.

In days gone by, political insiders in each state picked their delegates in the proverbial "smoke filled rooms" leaving ordinary party members completely out of the process. When decisions were made to make the process of nominating Presidential candidates more democratic, some states wanted to maintain some vestiges of the old process so that political insiders could retain some semblance of control. So they expended the size of the smoke filled rooms and invited regular party members to join them. In an effort to limit participation to just those who had a particular interest in the party's future, they made the selection a lot more cumbersome and time consuming than simply filling out a ballot.

My main problem with caucuses in general is that the process results are not necessarily representative of the desires of voting population of a state as a whole and it makes voting difficult on purpose. It reminds me in some ways of the stunts Republicans have been pulling to limit voter participation.

Article: Why We Shouldn’t Give a Damn Who Wins the Iowa Caucuses

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First you have to understand how both of the major parties go about selecting Iowa’s delegates to their national Presidential conventions. On caucus evening, usually starting about 7:00 pm local, voters in each of Iowa’s 1,774 precincts will begin to file into their Democratic or Republican caucus locations. There they will socialize, discuss who should get their votes, and hear speeches made by the representatives of each of the major candidates. Then, using their precinct’s local procedures, they will cast their votes for the candidates of their choice. It is the tabulation of these votes which will make nation news, but at this point the selection process for Iowa’s Democratic and Republican Party delegates to their national conventions has not even begun.

After the initial voting for Presidential contenders, the caucus attendees will also vote to select one delegate to represent their precinct at their party’s county convention which is to be held in March. On the Democratic side each of the 99 county conventions in turn select delegates to their district conventions which in turn choose delegates to the state convention. It is at the Democratic Party state convention in June that Iowa’s delegates to the national Democratic convention are chosen. The Republicans skip district convention step with their county delegates going directly to the state Republican convention which will also be held in June. Hence the direct votes for the Presidential candidates at the Iowa precinct caucuses are divorced from the processes used to choose the Democratic and Republican delegates to their respective nation conventions.

Another huge problem with the caucus system is how few people will actually attend the Iowa precinct caucuses and cast votes the evening of February 1st. In order to be able to attend a precinct caucus a voter must be a registered member of their party. In 2012 only about 20% of registered Democrats and 20% of the registered Republicans in Iowa attended their party’s precinct caucuses, but the actual attendance in the caucuses is far lower than that. In 2012, 31.5% of Iowans were registered Democrats and 31.2% were registered Republicans. The rest, 36.3% of voters, were registered as having “no party” and thus they could attend neither the Republican nor the Democratic caucuses. If you do the math, in 2012 only about 12.9% of the registered voters in Iowa took part in the Democratic and Republican caucuses and voted for the Presidential candidates of their choice.

The bottom line is that the population of Iowa makes ups less than one half of 1% of the nation’s voters and less 13% of the registered voters in the state bother to vote in the Iowa caucuses. In addition, that voting is divorced from the actual process by which Iowa delegates to the Democratic and Republican national conventions are chosen and that process will not be concluded until four months later. The only thing Iowa has going for it is that its caucuses are the first Presidential selection process in the nation. It’s well that Iowa has that distinction because otherwise no one would care a great deal how Iowans vote in their caucuses.

Why We Shouldn’t Give a Damn Who Wins the Iowa Caucuses