Explaining Walking Caucuses

Today is caucus day in Iowa. The talking heads either make it sound like THE important event in the election process, or a confusing mishmash of undemocratic practices. It is neither. Almost never do they pick the winning candidates from a crowded field. The fact that it is limited to those who have no conflicts, such as shift-work or lack of a babysitter, for the few hours it lasts, can be compared to most elections in this country where only a small percentage of citizens even bother to vote, hauling out their bucketful of excuses and indifference.

To those who have no idea what caucuses are, I offer the following. Not an Iowan, I have instead the experiences from Minnesota caucuses. My 8 years of being small city mayor made it nearly impossible to turn down the request to chair our precinct caucuses for my party. (Note: Minnesota defines city as all incorporated towns/cities with a mayor/council government, and town as townships with town boards for their governing bodies.) While the city elections are nonpartisan, my political preferences were known.

Our county is long and thin, full of small communities. On caucus night several locations were picked. Ours was held in a neighboring elementary school, having a nice parking lot, no evening activities scheduled, and lots of rooms for every precinct in each party in a larger geographical area to have their own discussions. In practice,  this meant from half to a full dozen people in our room. This was back before our population growth spurt, but still pretty wimpy. Once the group included a township as well, and things were much more interesting.

My job was easy. Show up, haul paper to and from the caucus, and follow the agenda. Beyond that point, I had the same 1 vote as everyone else. I wasn’t even necessarily the leader of the caucus, just presiding until the group chose one.

Each segment of the evening started with discussions. First they were about our desires for changes we wanted in the party platform. Perhaps an issue was being ignored. Or we thought something needed to be tweaked. Each person was given paper and a few minutes to write down whatever we wanted to. Then we could advocate for or against each proposal, sometimes combining several similar ones into a single proposal, followed by a vote. Each that passed was handed up to the county for their convention and platform selection, then to state, finally to national. Minor issues got dropped out during that process, and what remained became the party platform.

Then came candidate preference voting. This is where the walking part of the caucus came in at precinct level. County level used  this for all the platform suggestions as well. As before, we started with nominations from the floor, then people speaking up for or against each. On those rare occasions where several candidates were put forward, as would be this year in the presidential primary, different parts of the room would be designated as a place to go to stand with any others who supported the same candidate. A spot might be empty, or have several supporters. Assuming no candidate had 50% + 1 yet, those in the tiny groups were encouraged to leave their spot and move to join another group. Literally, walking. Once someone got a majority of the votes, they won the caucus vote. Results would be tabulated and sent up the chain. Then one could go home, trying their luck against those ubiquitous attack deer who jump out of nowhere to kill your cars. (Yes, that happened.)

It got more interesting, more fun, more noisy, and took a lot longer at the county level, usually weeks later. Delegates were chosen from volunteers at the local caucus, with a commitment to vote to represent the majority from their caucus for the first vote in the county convention. Rather than a couple hours, county lasted a day, sometimes even spilling over to a second. I enjoyed the county caucuses more than local, but with the increasing length and distance involved in attending state, and perhaps even getting chosen for national, I declined even trying for a spot.

Caucus results rarely had an impact beyond the local levels, but were important because Minnesota primaries weren’t held until September back then. Now of course, they’ve been moved way up the calendar so we might have some say by national convention time.

If you understand walking caucuses now, you might also understand ranked choice voting. Think same thing but with secret paper  ballot on election day. Minneapolis has tried it successfully, and information on that can be easily found.

The process takes effect when more than two candidates are vying for one spot, resulting in the selection of one by plurality, not majority. With ranked choice, the voter marked their first choice, then, separately, their second, and possibly even a third in a large field of choices for a position. Once all ballots are counted, if one candidate does not win by 50% +1,  the candidate with the fewest votes has those ballots withdrawn from their name and counted toward those voters’ second choice(s). Still no majority, each next-bottom candidate is dropped and their supporters’ next choice(s) are counted. Most elections have somebody with a majority by the time all the alternate choices are counted, and even if not, somebody with a much higher plurality than before wins.

The benefit is that the most people get the elected official they can stomach. We’d much rather get our second choice instead of our last choice. All too often now we wind up with somebody 37% think is OK but 63% strongly oppose. Ranked choice voting is the best solution, and personally, I hope the country comes to adopt it.

It’s not that hard to understand.