Thanks Bernie indeed!

Definitely, thank you Bernie.

end, they are clumsy, time consuming and disenfranchise the ones who need their voices heard. We need a nationwide primary day where everyone has the same voice and the same vote.

Bernie is Jewish and as a man who belives in decency and his faith I doubt he would be low class enough to pretend to be your Jesus and work "miracles".

A paper trail isn't a fucking miracle. When Bernie wasn't in the picture everybody wanted paper trails. So obvious.

I did not know Bernie was a Jew. I'll take your word for it,
that does not change my views. You just made me laugh!

Jesus was a Kurd.

bear is stuffed with.

That's as bad as saying you don't care that Tigger's bottom is made of springs.

Now I need to go watch Christopher Robin again to calm myself.

😉

The cat won one battle and my baby boy has a scratch.

from skeptics. stackexchange dot com

82

All biographies record that Sanders earned a living between graduating college and running for Mayor of Burlington at age 39. Wikipedia is typical, and gives references.

After graduating from college, Sanders initially worked in New York City in a variety of jobs, including Head Start teacher, psychiatric aide and carpenter. In 1968 Sanders moved to Vermont because he had been "captivated by rural life." After his arrival there he worked as a carpenter, filmmaker and writer.



Interesting,

you can always watch the episode of "Finding Your Roots which he appeared on. Larry David was also on it. You might be able to stream is just on WETA, or you may need Passport (membership in PBS.)

And sacred cows rarely perform miracles, they simply 'saved the Democratic party single-handedly...'

now and there wasn't a reliable one before. I might take a second look at miracles if this debacle manages to end the damn things.

and he also believed in progress, and, ffs, the poster was only using an allusion -- What's with all the hostility? The only "low class" element here is blatant religious bigotry.

and yeah, Jesus is way better known than Winne, your attempt at 'humor' notwithstanding.

The "problem" is your taking a commonplace, well-meaning expression far too seriously, not to mention literally.

I'm sorry your hatred of the religion is so deep as to cause such an odd overreaction.

He was a Kurd
The reason he had one genealogy is because his mom and dad were siblingsl

Don't let the cat out of the bag, incest was not bad. Ask he Ptolemies.

Did you ever hear the song about mommy kissing Santa Clause?

We used to have caucuses and they are very time consuming. And ours were always held at night, so if you worked or had family to take care of, too bad. Our entire system needs reforming from publicly funding our elections and getting big money out, to securing the vote with paper ballots, to making it easier for our fellow citizens to vote. These are all things that a party that can't win on their ideas and policy object to. At it's core is the reason why I can't respect people who identify with the GOP anymore. They are okay supporting a party that oppresses the will of the People.

It is highly doubtful there was any problem in the past. If you stood in a caucus and saw different results, you would scream to high heaven & be joined by your neighbors.

The paper trail does make it easier to reconstruct. Nonetheless, this is not a primary wherein the only proof is in the ballots cast.

Everyone who stays to the end knows that count no matter how angry, annoyed or whatever else they might be about how the alignment occurs.

After voting in a primary, you only know how you voted.

... in each group (after second alignment, cuz first really doesn't matter in the caucus results) on a piece of paper and had it confirmed by everyone there before phoning results in?

Certainly seems like a lot more "verifiable" result, by everyone present, than what I printed off election machines in my poll-working days, only confirmable by the paper audit trail and our checking was to make sure the number of votes the machines took equaled the number of voters in the precinct.

Some methods don't need improving.

And why at least this time the results can be re-examined and verified.

I suspect that in the past the results were not systematically preserved.

CNN also said this was the first time the voters were handed a card where they could state their preference and that card kept afterwards.

What did they do in the past? Just group together and someone jotted down a head count?

I am glad that had been changed.

Yeah caucuses need a lot more improvement.

Mainly the one that ends them.

these preference cards were new this year. AFTER the first alignment, each attendee filled out their preference card - which included your name, address, and preferred candidate (who you just aligned with). At that point, the cards for the viable candidates were collected. Also new for this year - if your candidate was viable after the first alignment, you could not re-align. People in the non-viable candidate groups held their cards until after they re-aligned, and then filled in their second choice candidate. Their cards were then collected.

This preference card system was new for this year. The cards were collected and kept by the chairs, thereby creating a paper trail.

In previous years, counts were documented on a caucus recording sheet by the chairs, but there was no specific record of each person's vote. Just a count of the numbers in each alignment group.

A lot fewer people used to be able to caucus.

made following the...let's just say "funky stuff" that took place during that caucus; one instance which I witnessed personally and shared at DU in a long post. I would re-post, but can't quite figure out how to get to it. If someone else can help with that, I'd be more than appreciative!

it was a cluster fuck, people came in buses, voted, and then left on buses.

Thank you Bernie for making our primaries more fair. We don't need super delegates, we need, one person - one vote.

second round. They had to go back to work.

That one person, one vote, is the best, most efficient and most likely to get solid results.

Caucasus are outdated.

Thank you Bernie.

Actually it probably would be no debacle at all. They would have released numbers based on what they had, and we would have moved on... never knowing that there was a good chance they were wrong.

their results were showing up correctly? (not only in this year, but in every year?)

everybody in the caucus walks away knowing what the final result was.

and neither changed my opinion. (although I appreciate solid argument and grounded opinion. so, thanks for getting it out there.)

I still find the proposition that caucus leaders are not sure of the results in their own caucus .. and would not follow up with how those numbers were reported and tabulated at the state level .. to be a VERY large stretch.

It's been noted for years that the caucus is a messy process (almost by design). By the same token, the "hands on" and grass roots level of participation makes cheating and/or manipulation quite unlikely. Any sort of highjinks would be happening right out in the open in front of hundreds of invested observers. The process, for all it's disorder, is quite transparent.

and that is why it is the way it is (i.e. let's blame Sanders for this) are wrong? Changes weren't made in the caucus to have more transparency? Interesting.

which didn't allow one to switch their candidate if the initial selection was "viable"

wanted more chaos and screwing with results? It would result in more gamesmanship, not less.

That's how it worked in the 2016 cycle and it was clearly much less chaotic than this one.

meaning that as people showed up... if they saw that their first candidate was doing "ok" in the caucus, they could choose to move to another candidate that they wanted to see do better (become viable).

This time around (for the first time) that option wasn't available.

The only "chaos" you speak of was the new result reporting method.

I happen to think that Iowa should have a normal secret ballot primary... with mail in ballots so everyone can participate... and Iowa should not be "first in the nation" as they are not diverse or anywhere near representative of the Democratic party... and there is undue attention paid to them because they go first.

If the first candidate was doing “ok”, they could move over to candidate #4 to make them viable, in order to prevent candidates #2 or #3 from gaining more support.

It’s gamesmanship and doesn’t belong in our elections.

Closed primaries only. With paper ballots.

From yesterday:

The Iowa Caucus Could Go Very Wrong

I don't like caucuses for a lot of reasons, but the "realignment" is one of them. It's not about which person a state things is best, but it's about gamesmanship and pulling people in to a 3rd person gets fewer delegates and all kinds of nonsense. It's not democratic.

Which allows you to have a say about multiple candidates who could closely match your values.

And here I though that this was something a lot of us were in favor of.

I've attended every caucus since 2004 (2012 excepted), and supporters of candidates who don't get at least 15% of the available votes in a precinct have always been required to either choose another candidate or (if there are enough of them) remain unaligned. That was true this year as well.

more than 15% of the total caucus attendees at your location, you are not allowed to make the switch to another candidate.

I wasn't aware of that, but then again, I've never tried to switch after making my choice, so it's never come up.

Especially with the Russians hacking our elections.

We don't need external people to "save" us.

I think that's a bit of hyperbole. Let's leave the messiah language to Trump supporters.

There was no paper trail in Iowa before Trump was impeached, either.

Logic can sound valid while being totally lacking in causality.

Let's see the receipts. Floating it in the press is not a receipt. Lobbying publicly and privately while others call you crazy is receipts.

Patting yourself on the back is just flattery mixed with self-delusion

Doubt is thoughtcrime when it comes to some candidates.

Thanks, I'll keep it in mind

Not shining a light in the darkness would be a waste.

………………………… enough said.

want to investigate who is behind Shadow, just saying.

Sanders?

I don't bash Democrats.

What investigation are you talking about that is being opposed by said people?

Do share.

Thought so.

Our PA governor is requiring this also.

Paper trail is a must.

And people wonder why we are held up to ridicule

the party is being torn apart by the "savior" of the party. But that's just my 2 cents.

Make Elections Great Again

This is THE best response I've read regarding this so far!

Credit where credit is due.

Thank you Bernie.

That's like saying "Thank you Lee Harvey Oswald for showing us that Presidents should not drive around in top-down convertibles."

Bernie Sanders wanting a paper trail is comparable to assassinating a President...

I get Biden supporters are having some problems accepting this but tone it back a bit

The precinct chairs have always written down the alignment counts; the change here was that individual voters wrote down their alignments, though many of them screwed it up which resulted in spoiled ballots.

The problematic realignment rules that seem to have confused people in several districts were concessions to the Sanders campaign, which didn't want its delegates to be able to change their minds after the first round.

Excellent planning on Sanders’ part! We need to all pull together to protect the integrity of all of our elections. Remember, “Vote Blue, No Matter Who!”.

What was added was each individual voter writes down their own preferences, which seems to have done more harm than good since people can't follow simple instructions.

WTF is wrong with our election planners? The only legitimate form of voting is ON PAPER. This has been demonstrated time and again since 2000, and especially the HAVA debacle.

PAPER, NOT VAPOR!

How trump-like
HE alone has fixed it?

He fixed it real good

Thanks for the thread bluewater.

I'll let the many counterpoints in this post speak for themselves. In the meantime, I'm voting for those who have proven that they are loyal and true democratic party members.

The first 4 contests are in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina & Nevada, so the system favors candidates who have the budget to set up organizations in four distant corners of the country and travel frequently between them. And, the two states that go first and have disproportionate influence for their size, Iowa & NH are overwhelmingly white and not representative of the demographics of the Democratic Party (or the country) as a whole.

I think it would make sense to have a bunch of regional primaries, like New England, Mid Atlantic, Southeast, Northwest, etc. Then, all the candidates could set up shop in a specific region and then move on to the next one. And, they should rotate from election to election the order in which the different regions vote, so that one small state doesn't always have oversized influence in selecting the candidate.

That's why it's been impossible to get candidates who will end a pointless corn ethanol subsidy program because it benefits Iowa, or to possibly store nuclear waste in Yucca mountain, because Nevada doesn't want it.

and having a hard time watching all this Iowa bashing, BUT I actually kind of like your idea for regional primaries. At least then the candidates could still campaign in each area and people would get to see them, and hopefully NOT just in big cities. That's the thing that people don't get about the Iowa caucuses and being first - we actually get to see and often meet the candidates. They don't just come to Des Moines or Cedar Rapids. They come to Decorah, Elkader, even my town of Waukon - small towns of 10,000, 5,000 or sometimes even fewer. They come to many more towns and areas of the state. I can't express enough what a difference it makes to actually be able to see candidates in person. If we went to a National Primary day, very, very few of us would ever get to see a candidate in person. They would hit the major population centers and that would be it. With your regional idea, I still think we'd see them less, but hopefully, if the regional primaries were spaced apart by enough, it wouldn't be a matter of only campaigning in large cities, but perhaps some smaller cities and towns, too.

I just pinched myself and confirmed I wasn't dreaming.

What Bernie wanted was additional reporting along the way, instead of just final results reported out at the end.

Let Bernie bask in the glory.

that if there are any suspected shenanigans you can contact the people at that caucus and ask the who they voted for.

I think people reading what you wrote about "you can contact the people at that caucus and ask the who they voted for" more than drives that point home. That would be totally unverifiable and impossible to implement.

have them signed in...

Firstly, the mechanics of doing so statewide are absurd.

Secondly, any "recount" conducted in that manner would be totally unverifiable, sorry, but I don't think the public or the campaigns would trust people on their word alone after the fact.

I don't mean to be rude, but your suggestion to do a recount in this manner seems totally impractical and unverifiable.

They were just little slips of paper, but they could be counted. I can't imagine that Iowa didn't write down its vote tallies until this year.

Similarly, summaries from voting machines are not paper trails. Who can vouch that such summaries are indeed accurate and mistake free? you cannot conduct an actual recount.

if necessary. But this wasn't in Iowa. The whole caucus system has become a goatfuck and it should be abandoned.

Thanks for that clarification, I was assuming you were talking about Iowa.

And it's good that those other caucuses had a proper paper trail.

contributed to the chaos?

Published on Monday....

The Iowa Caucus Could Go Very Wrong