5 Things You Didn’t Know About the Iowa Caucus.
The Iowa Caucus was running fine…at the 11th hour it fell apart. This is about the part that ran (mostly) fine.
The Iowa Caucus has stirred up headlines and headaches for many of us across the country since Monday, Feb 5th. We’ve been shaking our heads and throwing up our hands talking about how dysfunctional and unacceptable is it to have reporting errors and technical failures.
However, not all of it was a mess like the media would have us believe. As a Californian visiting Iowa, I was an observer at a West Des Moines caucus in a suburban precinct. I listened, watched, learned, and I’m here to to share what I found.
Before I say anything else, it’s helpful to have an overview of the caucus process. Given California is a primary state, I couldn’t have told you the difference between a caucus and primary before my plane touched down at the snow-covered Des Moines airport.
And let me tell ya…two very different voting processes. In a primary state, I have been a mail-in voter since I turned 18. Like many of my peers, voting is seen as a personal, private, and mostly undiscussed topic. Caucuses, on the other hand, are far from private. They are public spaces filled with debate and chaos — a very symbolic representation of democracy in a 3 hour event. Caucusing is a process where you physically show up to stand in-front of your friends, family, and neighbors to voice your political opinion and represent values that matter to you as a part of your civic duty.
The Iowa caucus is made up of 1,678 precincts (think neighborhoods ) all running the same caucus process in school gyms, cafeterias, and community centers. These precincts are assigned a number of county delegates (individuals who represent their county and are pledged to a candidate) before the caucus and the results of the caucus to determine how the county delegates are assigned to candidates.
This means that 1,678 precincts send their individual caucus results to the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) where these county delegates are converted into state delegate equivalents (SDE, usually a fraction). The sum of the SDE per candidate is rolled into a state-wide tally. This tally determines how the 41 Iowa state delegates (individuals who represent their state) divvied up and pledged to presidential candidates. As you can see, a caucus is a layered, manual, and public way to vote compared to the anonymity of the ballot box in primaries.
1/ Caucus: the process is pretty straightforward
Here’s an overview of the caucus proceedings:
- First alignment. Count all eligible voters (≥18yo by the Nov 3, 2020) in the room. Count all eligible voters aligned with (think voting for) each candidate. Determine viability (think eligibility) of candidates by using a ≥15% benchmark (total voters aligned with a candidate / total voters in attendance).
- Realignment. For viable candidates, all voters for this candidate are locked in. Voters with unviable candidates can do 1 of 2 things: move to a different candidate (viable or unviable) or fight for viability by persuading other voters with nonviable candidates to align with your candidate.
- Second alignment. Recount all eligible voters aligned with a candidate. All unviable candidates have their votes forfeited.
- Delegate allocation. The second alignment totals are used to determine the number of county delegates assigned to each candidate. Number of county delegates are assigned before the caucus. Here’s the official formula for county delegate allocation:
While wrapping up the results of the caucus, I was witnessed a surprising, illogical step in the rules: if there is a tie, delegates are awarded by coin-toss?!?!
Link from Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) Caucus Leader Handbook
2/ Coin Toss: the lazy, unnecessary tie-break method
A coin toss in a sports game, fine. A coin toss to see who picks where to eat, fine. Coin toss to assign delegates in an election, not fine.
This is the point where the caucus process stopped being logical. Not unlike when you put in 98% of the work, and then scribble something at the end so you can call it a night…but, you know, the presidential election version.
With the majority of precincts averaging between 4–7 delegates, to have 1 delegate randomly assigned based on a coin-toss is non-negligible and a huge let down for all participates of the process.
There are far more fair and rational ways of approaching a delegate tie-break other than “oops…flip a coin!”—especially given the fact that the IDP (Iowa Democratic Party) changed the entire caucus process for 2020 and added in this rule. Some possible simple solutions:
A. The candidate with the greater number of voters in the first alignment wins the delegate.
B. At a point of a tie post-second alignment, caucus-goers are asked to realign for a tie-break alignment between only the tied candidates. The candidate with the greater number of votes wins the delegate.
C. If no clear winner, no candidate is awarded the delegate and this delegate is removed from the total county delegate count.
I’m just saying, give me a GOOD reason why a coin-toss should ever be a part of an election process.
3/ Satellite Caucus: the “fix” isn’t enough
This is the first year the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) included satellite caucuses for Iowans who are unable to vote at their caucus location the night of Feb 5th. The satellite caucus is the attempt at creating a mail-in/absentee ballot equivalent for the caucus system.
Okay first things first, this is a good addition. But, this is an incomplete fix. Here are some of outstanding issues:
A. Excludes voters where time and money are a constraint: Satellite caucuses continue to exclude historically underrepresented groups of voters.
For those who:
- work nightshifts
- cannot afford childcare
- do not have transportation access to physically attend
- do not have the physical health to participate in the multi-hour process
their voices and votes continue to be silenced and absent from the democratic process.
B. Votes are counted differently: Rules dictating the of number of allocated county delegates for satellite caucuses skews results.
For determining the number of delegates: 1-20 caucus attendees result in 4 county delegates, 21-40 attendees result in 5 delegates…with a 9 delegate cap for satellite locations. It’s important to resurface that county delegates are directly proportional to the allocated the number of state delegate equivalents (SDE) pledged to presidential candidates. This cap in delegates means that a vote in a satellite caucus can result in only a percentage the weight that vote would have carried in a regular caucus.
This was the case at the University of Iowa where 318 people attended an on-campus satellite caucus. Due to the cap, the site was only allotted 9 delegates. If this had been a non-satellite caucus site, it would be worth more than 15 times as many SDEs (source: NYT).
C. Barred participation by limiting locations: Locations for satellite caucuses were determined by application. The IDP received over 200 applications and a total of 87 satellite caucuses were held (3 abroad, 24 in other states, and 60 in Iowa). What about the votes of the Iowans at the other 100+ satellite locations?
4/ Volunteers: huge effort to run it all
All aspects of the caucus, from preparation, organization, day of setup, and running the tension-filled, night-of process is run by volunteers. VOLUNTEERS! 👏👏👏
Let me paint you a picture: a caucus as a cross between a pep-rally, game of cross-the-line, speech & debate club, and a neighborhood watch meeting. And then sprinkle in the passive aggressive salt that comes with heated political opinions. Imagine running that process with no practice in a room full of your neighbors and national press!
For some numbers, take one location: 1 caucus chair, 1 secretary, ≥ 1 person running voter registration, ≥1 person running signup, ≥5 precinct captains (1 for each candidate seeking viability). With 1,678 precinct locations, that means >15,000 volunteers ran the caucus process statewide!
5/ Rules: what rules?
As many processes have it, there are rulebooks. The 2020 Iowa caucus had a 78-page rulebook (source: Iowa Delegate Selection Plan). Tell me who of the hundreds of thousands of volunteers and participants read up the rules.
This means that, inevitably, rules are constantly broken. To share an example of this, here’s a story I heard at a post-caucus gathering:
As Observers of the caucus process, we are directed to sit to the side without interfering or participating in the process. Sitting in the Observer section were 2 middle school classes supporting 1 particular candidate (stickers and merchandise reflected this). In the realignment, the wave of school kids rushed onto the floor and proceeded to persuade and pull caucus-goers with non-viable candidates to move over to their preferred candidates corner. No one was there to enforce rules, therefore there were no repercussions for breaking the rules. In the second alignment, this candidate went from unviable, to 4th to 1st in the precinct.
No enforcement. No repercussions. You tell me what you think.
For those like me who live in a primary-only world, who use the term “caucus” interchangeably with “primary”, “voting”, or “election”—I hope this view into the caucus world gave you as much pause it at gave me. Here are two points I’ve been thinking about:
- Why do we still have caucuses? What do we learn from them?
- How can we improve our voting and election systems holistically?
Here we are 3 days post-Iowa caucus. We don’t have all of the results in and the information we have coming in still has outstanding errors. It makes me wonder if this is and should be the end of the caucus-era.
That sets me up for my next post. Stay tuned for a view into the Iowa Reporting: the app, the fallout, the reason we need this to change.
To be continued…
