Wednesday, January 02, 2008

Iowa's unrepresentative caucus

The Iowa caucus is this Thursday and is the first primary election of the 2008 presidential campaign.  It also demonstrates many of the flaws in our elections.  Articles in the Herald-Sun and the News & Observer Tuesday give different estimates of the number of people expected to caucus - 120,000 to 150,000 Democrats and 80,000 to 90,000 Republicans, or fewer than 125,000 Democrats and 87,000 Republicans, respectively.  Iowa has a population of 2,982,085, with 600,572 registered Democrats and 574,571 Republicans.  94.9% of Iowans are white, 7.3% are in poverty, and the median household income is $42,865 dollars. 
 
Part of the reason for the low turnout could be that one or both of the party caucuses will allow people inside only between 7:30 and 8 pm.  According to the N&O article, the Republican caucus will be like a straw poll, and will give numbers of actual votes.  The results of the Democratic caucus will be reported as percents, calculated based on the number of actual votes, and requiring a candidate to get the support of 15% or more of the voters to qualify.  Both parties' caucuses will discuss party business and debate the merits of people's choices.  This sounds very democratic, like a town hall meeting (or a popular council, which is called a soviet in Russian), but what about people who cannot get to the caucus at that time or stay for however long it takes, because of work, disability, severe weather, lack of transportation or childcare, or for some other reason) or want the privacy of a secret ballot?  
 
The caucuses take place on the precinct level and select delegates to county, district, and state conventions, and finally the national party conventions.  It sounds like this is very much controlled by party officials, who probably do not have to vote for the candidate they were selected to support.  The whole point of Iowa being first and using this method was to give the grassroots more influence.  It is up to a party to decide how it will select its candidates, but if registered voters, as opposed to only dues-paying party cadres, are going to be asked to vote, it seems like their supposedly final choice should be given precedence over the machinations of party officials.     
 
These are some of the reasons the caucus does not sound very democratic to a North Carolinian, though it might be fun to caucus.  On another level, the idea of Iowa being first and supposedly being so good at 'winnowing' the field and assessing "viability" irritates me a lot.  Less than 3% of the delegates a candidate needs to win the national election are provided by Iowa, yet it is first, along with New Hampshire.  Some candidates will likely drop out just based on the results in Iowa, and much of the media, which has already been calling candidates ahead or behind based only on polls for months, will further ignore most of the candidates.  This could be an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy, since candidates who are mostly ignored or condemned as "second" or "third-tier" by the media will probably receive less money and attention from voters, and then lose to the candidates the media considers 'viable.'  It is true that some candidates are more likely to win than others based on these advantages, but the media puts most of the attention in the "horse race" on those with money and name recognition, instead of substance, hurting other candidates' chances, before anyone has voted.  By the time the election come to North Carolina, our votes don't matter much in deciding who the candidate for each party will be.  If the candidates spent more effort on states like this one, I'm sure we (or at least the two parties) could do at least as well as Iowans in determining which candidates we want.  I think there is also too much emphasis on personal appearances, but then again, I don't understand why people have so much trouble deciding on candidates or why many think all of the candidates in their party are equally good for their interests.  I can vote in the Democratic primary, though I am like an outsider looking in, but I would say most of the Democrats (and Republicans) are more of the same and dangerous and some are very dangerous, and they are all for capitalism and the general hegemonic control of politics by the capitalist class, whether they realize the implications of what they do and say or not.                 

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