What's the Matter with Iowa?

The trouble with the Iowa caucuses isn't that there's anything wrong with Iowans. It's the bizarre rules of the process. Caucuses are touted as authentic neighborhood meetings where voters gather in their precincts and make democracy come alive. In truth, they are anything but.

Caucuses occur only at a fixed time at night, so that many people working odd hours can't participate. They can easily exceed two hours. There are no absentee ballots, which means the process disfranchises the sick, shut-ins and people who are out of town on the day of the caucus. The Democratic caucuses require participants to stand in a corner with other supporters of their candidate. That eliminates the secret ballot.

There are reasons for all this. The caucuses are run by the state parties, and unlike primary or general elections aren't regulated by the government. They were designed as an insiders' game to attract party activists, donors and political junkies and give them a disproportionate influence in the process. In other words, they are designed not to be overly democratic. Primaries aren't perfect. But at least they make it fairly easy for everyone to vote, since polls are open all day and it takes only a few minutes to cast a ballot.

Little wonder that voter turnout for the Iowa caucuses is extremely low -- in recent years about 6% of registered voters. Many potential voters will proclaim their civic virtue to pollsters and others and say they will show up at the caucus -- and then find something else to do Thursday night.

All of which means that the endless polls on the Iowa caucuses are highly suspect. Iowans have been bombarded by well over a million political phone calls in recent days. They range from "robo calls" from interest groups touting one candidate or another to breathless teenage volunteers inviting the voter to a local coffee with some obscure relative of a candidate.

Smart voters tune all this out and screen their calls, making it difficult for pollsters to reach them. Even when they do answer the phone, many people refuse to participate in surveys. Pollsters can't call people who only have cell phones. So you get implausible results like last Friday's Los Angeles Times survey that found Barack Obama in third place on the Democratic side and Mike Huckabee running away with the GOP contest. The Times's pollsters surveyed just 174 likely Republican voters and 389 Democratic one, with a whopping margin of error of plus or minus seven percentage points among Republicans and five points among Democrats.

Iowa voters' allegiances are notoriously volatile. A new Associated Press poll of a large sample of voters estimates that 40% of GOP voters had changed candidate allegiances since November. In 2004, polls a few days before the caucuses suggested suggested Howard Dean would be a shoo-in. He finished a distant third, behind John Kerry and John Edwards.

Then there are the problems of reporting the results on election night. At least the Republican caucus is a one-man, one-vote affair where people write their preferred candidate's name on a slip of paper, and whoever gets the most votes wins.

Democrats have a mind-numbingly complex system in which participants divide up into "candidate preference groups" by standing up. No paper ballots are used. Those candidates who don't get support from 15% or more of those attending a local caucus are deemed not to be "viable," and their supporters have to realign with some other candidate.

"That's when it gets kind of crazy," says Mark Daley, a former spokesman for the Iowa Democratic Party. "There will be people screaming back and forth . . . and senior citizens with calculators trying to do the math." Only after all this are county convention delegates allocated among the candidates and the results phoned in to the state Democratic Party. Delegates aren't actually allocated until the Democratic county conventions in March.

Not all local caucuses are equal. The "entrance" polls of voter preferences that you will see reported Thursday night are likely to be from urban areas, which may shortchange candidates like John Edwards, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson, who have campaigned more heavily in rural areas. "It's entirely possible that John Edwards could come in a stunning second when all the votes are in, but the country will have gone to bed thinking he only took third place," says Howard Fineman of Newsweek.

Rural Iowa matters for another reason in the Democratic contest. In order to encourage candidates to campaign in farming areas, state Democrats have tilted the delegate allocation so that rural areas are disproportionately represented in the final results. This sometimes can lead to bizarre results. As Roger Simon of Politico.com notes, "the turnout in some precincts is so small that a single family--let's say four people--can determine the winner. In other precincts, only one person will show up and win for his candidate by being the only person in the room." In small-turnout caucus meetings, ties are resolved by a coin toss or drawing lots. In 2004, four precincts saw literally no one show up to vote in the Democratic caucus.

There are other anomalies on the Democratic side. Some precincts use a different threshold level than 15% for the viability of a candidate. "Residency" rules are incredibly elastic. No one checks identification, and anyone who claims to live in the precinct is allowed to vote. In other words, very little prevents the unscrupulous (such as out-of-state campaign workers who have "lived" in Iowa for a few weeks) from having a role in the process. Each caucus also elects a "permanent chair," who can have an outsize role in the process. Ned Chiodo, who has been appointed temporary chair of his local caucus by the state Democratic Party, told Politico.com that a permanent chair "controls the flow of the meeting. You have influence. You may be able to pick up a vote or two here and there for your candidate."

All of these arcane rules, combined with the fixed time and place voters mush show up in order to influence the result, make the Iowa caucus a test of organization as much as actual voter support. "The candidate that provides the most babysitters or literally drives older people to the polls the most can have a real edge," Tom Tauke, a Republican former congressman, once told me.

Thus the Iowa caucuses are far from a Norman Rockwell exercise in small-town democracy. They may not be as bad as the "smoke-filled rooms" of yore, but give me a simple primary election any day. I can't wait for New Hampshire.

This article first appeared on the Wall Street Journal 's OpinionJournal.com on December 31

Comments

[publicspeaker]

My only experience with caucuses came in March or April 1976 in Boulder, Colorado. I went thinking that I would observe true democracy ...and maybe I did. The room was dominated 3-to-1 by voters for some candidate I had never heard of: Jimmy Carter.

It was so early in the year that I hadn't yet paid any attention to candidates. (Those were the days!) I imagined some discussion, some give-and-take, but no. The Carter people came prepared. One voice vote and it was over.

Perhaps this was indeed democracy in action, because the clear majority prevailed. But I felt railroaded, as if some backroom deal had taken place. I was so disspirited that I never registered when I moved out of state later in the year, and didn't vote. Only election that's ever happened.

The lesson is clear now, of course: if you want your voice heard, you'd better get out there early and shout your preference.

[SamEllison]

It is your profession, MSM, that has been hyping this for 14 months already. It's much easier than reporting the news.

[steve12]

Yes the process is extremely complicated. You move to the part of the room that like minded people are located. You explain to your neighbors why you're for this or that person and then your vote is recorded. I can't think of anything more complicated, except perhaps moving one leg in front of the other.

I wish every state has a similar system for their party caucus. I wouldn't want this for the general election, but for a party meeting, I see nothing wrong with it.

It's called participatory democracy. I know it's a lot harder than marking your selection and sending it in the mail, never having to see or speak with another soul about it. However, I think we need more of this kind of thing, as long as you keep intimidation out of the process, which the people of Iowa seem to have done.

We have men and women who are dying overseas for a war that they did not start and may not even support. I don't think asking for a few hours of someone's time on some cold evening is too much to ask.

[Herr Oberinspektor]

Our presidential campaigns should last no longer than a baseball season. A series of three national primary days in May/June/July, with rotating states every election cycle. Nominations take place in August that begin a three month election.

[appleknocker]

In retrospect, the "smoke-filled rooms of yore" weren't so bad if you consider the quality of the candidates they produced as compared to the recent crew.

[ParacleteofKavorka]

All the primaries should be on the same day/date. The heck with Iowa, New Hampshire and the rest. I've been voting absentee for the last 10 years due to vision problems. I don't know why everyone doesn't mail it in if they have trouble getting to the polls on a Tuesday night.

I get to keep a stub off my ballot (in CA) with a number. I wish I could go online to see if my number is listed and the ballot was received and recorded accurately. It would still be confidential.

One other pet peeve I've had since I was a kid. Why on earth does the news media have to report election results the minute the polls close with 3% of the total in. The results shouldn't be reported till all the ballots are counted, say 8:00 AM the next day. What difference does it make the order in which they are counted? The vote totals are what they are the minute the polls close, except in Florida and Ohio.

I noticed that the ATM at Bank of America is made by Diebold. How about that? I got a paper receipt of my transaction, so they do know how to do it.

[darker]

IOWA = 4-letter word.
that's what's the matter

Also B-u-s-h
Also R-o-v-e

Also sh*t.

[Desiderata]

Beats those damn machines that subtract votes instead of add, switch a voter's vote from one party to the other and often launch votes into cyberspace never to be seen again.

Seems to me Iowa Caucuses keep the voters in charge instead of the "visitors"­....

[ajax2]

John Fund is preempting Iowa results he might not like.

[WilliePilgrim]

What's wrong with Iowa? it's got an inflated sense of self, thanks to the attention it recieves.
Why doesn't the state that has the highest percentage of qualified registered voters who actually vote automatically get to select its order in the primaries? Oh, yeah, cuz the system is f*cked, that's why...the two party system, as currently practiced is an impediment to representational governement, acting more as a smoke screen for the back room wheeling and dealing that's come to characterize our system.

[sofia]

What's the matter with these Primaries should be the real question. They are dragged out for too long and IMO, the primary elections should be uniform in all the atates. Same date for everyone! Even better, give the people the chance to vote on two days, for example, a Sunday and a Monday. The turnout might be better than what we have now.

[mpgarr]

Reading some of the posts today about the Iowa cacuses makes me think they are not such a good thing--you usually don't get such a clear and simple description of them in the "MSM"--all you get is the damned "horse race" aspect of who is up and who is down--listening to all of the taking head pundits talk about Iowa--it is more or less like watching a horse race--"and they are off-it's Hillary in the opening stretch of the Democratic race---oh it's Obama coming up rounding the first turn and in the Republican race--McCain is coming up in the stretch!!"
Holy shit-is this anyway to run the world's current "hyperpower" "leading democracy" ???????

[JoAnnCr]

The caucus is not just Thursday night. It has been going on in living rooms, library meeting halls and small cafes for a year.

Because of the caucus I now know one of my neighbors who is elderly has to decide between buying food or her prescriptions. Another, I found out last night, works 20 hour shifts as a nurse and has no health insurance. Talking to those two individuals was part of the caucus.

What happens Thursday night will be a culmination of vetting candidates, looking them in the eye to gauge their sincerity and of a deep and thorough review of their issues and plans. It's an amazing process and gives unlikely individuals who step up to the plate a chance to make a difference.

[LeftRight]

The problem is that everyone in the MSM, and most people in the real world think that what happens in IA is important, and therefore whoever wins IA is the "Most Electable" in the general election..­..