Lane and Tina have both posted their impressions of the caucus session for their corner of Iowa, on Eat Your Vegetables and Kickass Sociology, respectively. Some interesting comments, especially as I’m planning on hitting the local precinct caucus for my area of Seattle in early February. Apparently it was all a lot more chaotic and a lot less inspiring than either of them had hoped for.
From Lane:
Overall, i’m not a fan of the caucus system. First problem is that it is so open to corruption and influence. Note the count totals. There were 533 people eligible to vote but the first round had just 519 votes cast. The second round, mysteriously had 535 votes. Likely just bad counting, but it’s also two more people than were eligible to vote and i saw at least 10 people head home after the first round.
[…]
I’m glad we got to experience it. After hearing so much about the Iowa caucuses, it was great to be part of one, registering people, observing, and shaking my head at this weird brand of Iowa democracy – a democracy of those who are the most organized and aggressive.
And from Tina:
The opportunity for corruption in this process is enormous. Nobody could hear what was going on, the campaign leaders are striking deals with each other, but no one knows what the deals are. The campaign leaders are in charge of counting their own constituents. The rest of the people are sitting or standing around like sheep while all of this goes on around them. If they move, perhaps to talk with someone over from another campaign, they might not get counted. It was nowhere near the robust, townhall meeting exchange of views that I was hoping for. And it took forever – over 4 hours (not counting the platform stuff that makes up the 2nd half of the caucus). I was exhausted by the end of it.
In sum, Iowa Caucus = Political Circus. I didn’t witness any advantage over a ballot-based primary, and saw lots of disadvantages. How disappointing.
Hopefully things here in Washington will be a little more organized and less exasperating than what they went through. Never having done the caucus thing before (Alaska either doesn’t have caucuses, or I wasn’t interested enough to know about them when I lived there), it’ll be an entirely new thing for me. I’ll see what I think of it all come Feb. 7th.
iTunes: “MTV Grind Vol. 1 (full mix)” by Various Artists from the album MTV Grind Vol. 1 (full mix) (1997, 55:19).