America Shrugs At Iowa's Undemocratic Caucuses

In January 2004, Howard Dean's campaign was strategizing the Iowa caucuses. Confident they had locked in enough committed supporters to carry the state, staffers were reportedly thinking of ways of helping John Kerry rise in the final results. With Wesley Clark threatening Dean's dominant position in New Hampshire, the Dean campaign thought that boosting Kerry in Iowa would make him more competitive in the Granite State and siphon votes away from Clark.

Dean's caucus night ended up being starkly different from what his campaign had planned; and boosted by his Iowa triumph, John Kerry did siphon votes away from Wesley Clark, though significantly more than what Dean had in mind.

Four years later, campaigns are preparing similar ploys and alliances. Rumors are circulating of an agreement between John Edwards and Hillary Clinton to help bury Barack Obama; or is it perhaps Bill Richardson that the Clinton campaign is trying to get on board? And will Denis Kucinich renew his 2004 alliance with Edwards?

In this strategic fury, hardly anyone is pausing to wonder what Iowa's openness to such manipulation reveals about America's electoral process. Many criticize representative democracies for reducing individuals to pawns in larger power plays, but only the Iowa caucuses can reveal just how profoundly dysfunctional the system is in its indifference to local undemocratic processes.

Iowa's Democratic caucuses are anything but a straight-up election. Each precinct is allocated a certain number of delegates who are then distributed among candidates who have reached the 15 percent viability level. At the end of the night, only the percentage of delegates each candidate has carried is reported.

Campaigns quickly end up with "spare voters." They often fail to reach the viability threshold and all their backers must realign; or just as probable is that a campaign can afford giving away a few backers and still end up with the same number of delegates. If it is sufficiently coordinated, an effort to redirect such "spare voters" to another candidate can deprive a third who is deemed to be the bigger threat of an extra delegate. Across all precincts, such a strategy can add up to significant percentages.

But that anyone can not be repulsed by the idea of a "spare voter" shows how immune we have gotten to affronts to the democratic process. In what kind of democracy is a voter so useless and reducible to a commodity that can be swapped away? How can the rest of the country tolerate that the nomination race be so heavily influenced by a contest in which victory is attained through back-door agreements to exchange supporters?

Granted, there are plenty of examples of similarly undemocratic processes at the heart of the American system. But in the era of powerful urban machines that dominated local politics, the country at least pretended to look away. Imagine if the nation gathered in Chicago every four years to celebrate the glory of Richard Daley's iron fist.

The reality is that we will never know precisely how people intended to vote as they went in their caucus site on January 3rd and what the results would have been if Iowa Democrats voted straightforwardly like in any other primary contest and even like Iowa Republicans whose process is much less quirky.

The list of grievances against Iowa's caucus process is strikingly long even beyond the shady voter-swapping strategies. For one, the allocation of delegates is biased towards rural precincts who get a larger share than their voting population justifies. And come caucus night, there always are a few of these precincts where only one voter shows up and can single-handedly decide who gets the delegates.

Many people simply cannot afford putting aside four hours on a Thursday night. Some might be working late hours and cannot make it on time; couples who have children might not be able to both caucus since someone has to watch the kids; and many might just not want to stay up that late on a working night.

Despite the massive organization and the media spotlight, only about 10 percent of Iowa Democrats are expected to participate in the caucuses. And given how intense the night can be and the insider deals that decide the results, it is hardly surprising that Iowans shy away if they are not firmly committed to a candidate or if they are not used to attending such caucuses.

Caucusing is a daunting process, mainly because voting is a public act. Caucus-goers have to physically move to the part of the room where their candidate's group is standing and often follow it up by defending their choice in front of their peers. Observers too often celebrate this as a symbol of participatory democracy though it is the aspect of the process that has the most troubling consequences.

Can everyone be expected to escape the pressure of seeing respected members of the community move somewhere else? What if a woman feels uncomfortable telling her husband who she is truly supporting? What if the employer of a Chris Dodd-backer is supporting Obama?

The realignment phase only exacerbates these problems as attempts to persuade others is an integral part of the caucus process. If Chris Dodd is unviable in this particular district, the employee will be directly subjected to appeals from backers of other candidates. To refuse to join the camp of the Illinois Senator, the now-former Dodd supporter would need to actively refuse his employer's plea. The implicit pressure inherent to any social situation here finds itself vocalized and sanctioned.

Hopefully enough caucus-goers will be able to withstand such stress. But odds are many will succumb to exactly the kind of manipulations secret ballot voting is meant to prevent.

There was an outcry last week when a media consortium announced it would conduct and possibly report an entrance poll of the caucuses, interrogating people on their way in. The poll would thus measure voter support prior to any realignment and report raw individual numbers rather than delegate allocations. Since this will in no way correspond to the totals the Iowa Democratic Party will release at the end of the caucuses, media critics charged that such surveys would be misleading.

In fact, the official results are much more likely to be misleading than the entrance polls.

Comments

[splashy]

What a ridiculous way to do things! That's NOT democracy.

[Simone]

A striaght up election would give you the candidate with the most money and the most name recognition. I doubt that is what anyone wants.

Does Iowa get too much attention? Absolutely yes and as an Iowan I'm tired of being chopped and diced by reporters who go to diners and coffee shops to talk to the 'average' voter and make broad, sweeping and inaccurate generalizations about the state. The average voter is at work, not hanging out at diners with the retirees. I would prefer the candidates spend less time in Iowa and more time in DC doing their jobs which is to promote the Democratic agenda. Is it January 4 yet? I can hardly wait.

[kardwell]

Combine this scenario with our rigged electronic voting system, plus all those criminal republicans running around telling black folks they are not allowed to vote, and the wacko dictator we have occupying the WH and we begin to resemble a proper third-world country.

By now it should be quite evident to pretty much everyone that our country is in deep, deep shit. In both principal and practice, Democracy is an amazing philosophy and system, however, it requires a bit of work. It is a tenuous, demanding, and often bloody proposition, as our forefathers and mothers knew firsthand, but they laid it all on the line for their values.

I wonder what it would take to provoke and catalyze such passionate conviction today. Would this level of personal sacrifice for principal even be possible today?

[Praedor]

Here here! It is time to do away with this antiquated and undemocratic nonsense. Let the People decide who they want to vote for: let's begin doing national primaries. Make the candidates address the broad concerns of ALL Americans rather than the insular, farm-subsi­dy-dominat­ed and conservative interests of Iowans or New Hampshire caucuses. These two states do NOT have the right to choose who I will get to vote for come November 2008. I don't need, nor want, their "sage" decision made for the rest of us.

National primaries. It is the only democratic and fair thing to do.

[ruchild]

UGH, does this person live here? Does he understand the history of the event happening here?

We go to caucus and we stand up (literally for HOURS) for the candidate of our choice, all of our neighbors knows exactly who we are supporting and then there comes the horse trading aspect of the process, where we try to convince others to join our group and support our candidate, because their candidate doesn't have enough support to go forward in the process, hence the "ambiguous" nature of the reporting, because really in the end, does who came in where really matter, when we are trying to put forward an electable candidate that we all can get behind and support??? Does who fell into 9th matter? Seriously, what is with all the PC bs about our caucusing process? Who is really crying foul, are the Iowan's complaining? None of my neighbors are, as it keeps their anonymity beyond the actual room, which is what we all get in the voting booth, because no one knows who votes for whom on that day do they? So the republicans tell, the dems don't, big hairy deal folks, get over it, until we don't like our process, let it go, because it is OUR (Iowan's) process.

And for those who say that Iowa doesn't matter, have you met an Iowan? Do you know how much thought actually goes into this process for these people? The most conscientious folks are right here in Iowa, these people (some still farmers) will mull over the purchase of big ticket machinery for months, why wouldn't you want the same care and attention to detail paid to the political contest? There is no rush to judgment in Iowa, which is why it really matters here and you really can't buy the votes here either, these are a group of people who really do do their homework, you should feel safer in that thought.

[AnotherIADem]

"In January 2004, Howard Dean's campaign was strategizing the Iowa caucuses. Confident they had locked in enough committed supporters to carry the state, staffers were reportedly thinking of ways of helping John Kerry rise in the final results."
Total BS. Kerry was already starting to rise in the polls in the final weeks-- no way were the Dean people going to help another candidate. I have caucused many times, and I never seen anyone align in the way he describes. This is total fantasy-- if the author came up with it himself, he is delusional. If he believes it based on what someone told him, he is extremely gullible.

[BernieO]

Too bad our juvenile media doesn't shrug Iowa off. They give it far too much credence and have thus created a self-fulfilling prophecy. The Iowa caucuses have a big influence only because they media say they do. They could just as easily downplay them and keep reminding people how out of the mainstream they really are. But that would be accurate and boring!

It's a disgrace for the oldest democracy to allow a couple of small, unrepresentative states to have such power over who its presidential candidates are.

[navalvet]

We need a constitutional amendment which should provide for the order of primaries abd caucusese by lot, every four years. One of the results of Iowa, first is the ethanol boondoggle. Few candidates speak against a very damaging program. The whole idea of a caucus is exclusionary because it keeps those with children, or their baby sitters, away. On a stormy night, caucuses may not have wide rural representation. Lack of a secret ballot is problematic but not necessarily bad. Should a secret ballot have a built in second choice, it would satisfy the requirement that everyone chose a "viable" candidate.

[qvisions]

*shrugs*

Obama 08!