Iowa Caucus

I just came back from the Iowa caucus in the precinct where Dad lives in Davenport, Iowa. Dad went to the Republican one, and I went to the Democratic one. The experience was eye-opening in a lot of ways.

First of all the caucus has more to do than just choose delegates. They also recruit delegates for the platform committee and something called the committee committee (??). The caucus is also supposed to make suggestions for the platform committee, but so much time was taken to determine the delegates that the recommendation at the end was made to submit suggestions in writing to the platform delegates, which was quickly voted in.

I took an elderly lady, Dorothy, from Ridgecrest to the caucus. She was surprised at the large turn out. She said some years there were only 10 people gathered. Our precinct had 206 voting plus maybe 25+ volunteers. Caucusers first filled out a form and either checked their name off on a registered list or signed in. Apparently independents can caucus with any party they wish in Iowa.

The caucus was at a small training school for disabled adults. Two different precincts met there. We met in the gym (about 1/3 the size of a normal gym). There were signs around on the walls with names of Edwards, Hillary, Biden and Obama. Obama's group was larger and noisier. The signs were hand lettered. The Obama organizers had brought in food, as had Hillary's group. Dorothy said this was unusual. None of the others brought food. Obama's group had all ages but with a lot of young people. There was a noticeable mixture of brown faces among the white. Hillary's group had a wide range of ages and a few brown faces. Edwards had mostly middle-class, white supporters.

The first order of business was to elect a permanent chairman. One could see they were not prepared for such a big turn-out. There was no PA system and the votes had to be calculated on a small hand calculator with no tape read out to check the results. The temporary chair had laryngitis and called on a friend to take over because he couldn't speak loudly enough. That man was promptly elected permanent chair. They asked for volunteers for a temporary secretary. A woman volunteered and was immediately elected permanent secretary. The next order of business was to pass around an envelope to invite people to contribute money to defray to cost of the caucus.

Then the job of tallying the votes started. Each candidate had someone who was in charge of tallying the votes. People signed their names on a list. The 1st round tally was Obama - 86, Hillary 49, Edwards 46, Biden 13, Kucinich 2, Richardson 2 and 5 undecided. They determined that the number of people who signed in at the beginning was 206. The "level of viability" was 15% of that or 31 votes. No one seemed concerned that these votes did not add up to 206. The chairman said, oh, someone must have left. Certainly it would have taken all night to determine who hadn't voted. Since Binden, Kucinich, and Richardson were below the viability level and even combining their votes would not reach 31, all their supporters had to find another candidate. At this time, even those who had chosen a viable candidate could change their votes. So there was much discussion and the final results were Obama 98, Hillary 53 and Edwards 52.

Looking at this result made me realize how important each person's vote is. If I had not brought Dorothy (a Hillary supporter) to the caucus, Edwards and Hillary would have been tied. How could that have been resolved? As it was, Obama got 3 delegates, Hillary got 2 and Edwards got 1. I noticed the Edwards crowd was not happy with the results but there was no way to divide a delegate in half and the precinct had a total of 6 delegates.

Dad's caucus went a little smoother. They did not have to assign delegates to each candidate, rather that would be determined at the county convention. The results in Dad's caucus was Romney 35, McCain 19, Huckabee 18, Thompson 8, Guiliani 6, Paul 4. Tancredo and someone named Hunter got 0. Of course, there was a minor glitch in that 90 people registered in the precinct but only 85 voted in the beginning. Then it was determined that some people had not got a ballot, so they voted and brought the tally to 90.

Are caucuses better than primaries? After seeing the process, I have mixed feelings. I like the fact that independents, such as myself, can participate in a caucus while we are shut out of the primary in Florida. There is something very convival about caucusing. I made a lot of new friends and got a chance to meet some neighbors. The primary process is very impersonal while the caucus takes on the character of a town meeting. I find the Democratic rules, however, very limiting. By forcing caucus to parcel out delegates according to the number of supporters means that some arbitrary decisions have to be made. For example, what would have happened if Hillary and Edwards were tied? How could they have broken the tie if no one wanted to give up? Edward came out the loser since he got one delegate to Hillary's two. If this were repeated across the state, you could potentially have Edwards with 48% of the votes to Hillary's 52%, but she would have twice as many delegates as Edwards. And what happened to those 3 missing votes? Did they really go home? Later, someone went to the bathroom (there were none in the gym) and was barred from coming back in. She had already voted, but potentially her vote could have been disqualified. The other down side of caucusing is that people have to be physically present. No allowance can be made for sickness or work.

The Iowans will get some relief from all the political ads - TV, direct mail, phone calls, billboards, door to door, you name it. I even got a computerized message on the phone in the guest room at Ridgecrest. Now everyone will tottle off to New Hampshire for a few days until their primary. I expect to see a lot of them in Florida after that since our primary is Jan. 29.

Catherine