ARE THE CAUCUSES REALLY FAIR?

By R. A. Pearson

For several months before the night of January 3, 2008, the nation watched as 20 some odd presidential candidates crisscrossed the cornfields of Iowa, a small Midwestern state with a population of about three million people, stumping for votes in the first contest for votes at their party’s presidential nomination convention later in the summer. The contest is not an election, it is a caucus, it does not take place over a 12 hour period, it occurs at night when it can be cold and stormy and the voter must be present to vote. The vote does not necessarily get to take place in secret. Moreover, the candidates must sometimes poll a strong fifteen percent to win any votes at all. So as we look at the Iowa caucuses and other caucuses in 2008, Americans should ask themselves is this a fair way to select delegates to national conventions?

The first problem with caucuses is they are not open. To vote in a caucus, or ‘to caucus,’ the voter has to be a member of the party. While many states allow the independent voters to register as a party member the day of the caucus and switch back the next day, this causes a lot of expensive paper work on behalf of the state and county governments who keep voter registration rolls for the political parties. In a day when more Americans are disavowing party affiliations, caucuses and primaries should be held on the same day in each state and be open, that is accessible to anyone wishing to vote or caucus in that contest. One voter registration roll at that site would work and help curb the power of political parties in the American nomination process.

A second, and certainly a major problem with the caucus system, is the voter has to caucus in person at a set time and date. There are no absentee votes for people who are out of town, working at the time of the caucus, or in the armed services of our nation. The fact that people who are out of the area, especially those in the armed services, are shut out of the nomination process seems terribly unfair in a day when communication is now virtually instantaneous around the world. Perhaps it is the caucus system, with its built in disfranchisement possibilities, America needs to examine before the 2012 nomination process begins.

A problem related to the problem with the absence of absentee ballots is the caucus is held at a set time and place; people who are working, held up by weather or a family emergency, or people held up by an unexpected freight train for a few minutes are shut out of the caucus for being a few minutes late. The Iowa caucuses began at 7:00 p.m. on a cold January 8th night. The Republican caucus in Nevada began 9:00 a.m. on Saturday January 19th and the Democratic caucus began at 12:00 on the same day. It was hoped employers would allow workers to cover for one another as the caucuses were staggered and several were held in major casinos on the Las Vegas strip with the turn out exceeding expectations. However, no one really knows how many workers in the 24-7 world of Las Vegas were unable to participate in the nomination process because they were working during the caucus hour instead of having polls open for 12-hours to vote in a primary election.

Another problem with a caucus is there is not a secret ballot, especially in many Democratic caucuses. In most Republican caucuses the participants sign in and write down their candidate on a slip of paper so the process is somewhat secret. However, in the Democratic caucuses it is usually stand and be counted. Everyone, your neighbor, your boss, your preacher, your spouse, knows who you supported. In the Nevada caucus there was a lot of pressure from the culinary workers union to support Senator Obama, but many workers supported Senator Clinton instead. The same was true in many situations in Nevada as unions that had indorsed one candidate saw its members support other candidates. The Australian or secret ballot is a backbone of the American electoral system; why has the Democratic Party thrown it out of its caucuses?

The way the votes are counted in the caucuses is also confusing and convoluted. Here, once again, the Republicans with their simple vote representing the concept of ‘one man, one vote,’ an American standard since the 1960s U.S. Supreme Court decisions Reynolds V Sims and Westbury V Sanders, get it right. They vote; then phone, fax, or e-mail in the results to party headquarters; tally up the vote and award delegates. Assuming the delegates are awarded proportionally, this is a fair process. However, later caucuses and primaries tend to be winner take all elections where someone with a 35% plurality could capture all the state’s delegates, a situation the Clarion Issue sees as unfair.

On the other hand, the Democratic Party uses what is known as ‘caucus math’ and here is where a major problem occurs. First in the initial voting a candidate must be ‘viable,’ if the candidate does not receive 15% of the votes in that precinct the candidate gets no votes from that precinct and the delegates of that candidate must realign with another candidate. The results are a skewed percentage total; New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson initially received 10% of Iowa’s caucus votes and wound up with only two percent of the final vote winning no delegates. In Nevada’s ‘caucus math’ Senator Clinton won 51% of the vote and got 12 delegates; while Senator Obama received 45% of the vote and was awarded 13 delegates. ‘Caucus math’ would take a slate of Democratic lawyers to explain.

‘One man, one vote’ has been part of the American voting system for over 40 years. The caucus system and winner take all contests, along with closed contests designed to keep the independent voters out of the nomination process, are setting back American democracy and putting elections further into the hands of the major political parties and special interest groups controlling American politics today. This control needs to end.

Whether you believe the caucus system is fair or not, one has to agree the process is intriguing and interesting to watch. As a CNN watcher, I was amazed at one Democratic caucus that took place in a farmhouse in western rural Iowa and was covered by the network. About 75 caucus goers and many children gathered in the house at the appointed time, had coffee and refreshments (probably leftover fruitcake), patiently heard the presentations from the candidates’ surrogates, and then assembled in the bedrooms and kitchen to be counted. Delegates whose candidates were not viable realigned and were counted, the votes announced, sent in to party headquarters, and the people went home. CNN’s Jack Cafferty, TV’s favorite curmudgeon, later said it was democracy in action. He went on to indicate: the people met, discussed, voted, were counted, and went about their business. There is no killing, protest, and political assassinations like we see in places like Kenya and Pakistan. The Clarion Issue believes regardless of how one may feel about the caucus system, Cafferty is right; America has survived a lot of greedy, power grabbing, self-serving, stupid, politicians, and our system went on to be a beacon of democracy to the world. Let’s hope it can become that once more.