... I never got around to asking this during the 2016 elections: what's the difference between a caucus and a primary? Why is a caucus so much more prone to, er, whatever happened here?
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Democratic Presidential Primary |February OT| It Can't be Worse than Iowa, Right? (Discussion Guidelines in OP)
- Thread starter Poodlestrike
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if jeff weaver was really all that concerned about caucuses sucking he should have encouraged the bernie supporters on the DNC unity commission to push for them to be eliminated altogether.
As others have noted he didn't pay for the app tallying the votes. Not that it would make a difference because there's no scenario where he wouldn't get caught rigging the numbers.
So you're telling me the campaign wasn't financially involved with the company they paid money to.
Alright then.
Read what you want I guess.
You know some of the voting stations were at public schools where some of Pete's staff have kids in attendance. We should shut those schools down too. They're too closely tied to him
Look, friendo, you can backpedal and edit all the posts you want but you can't deny that you boosted a poorly formed conspiracy theory with nothing but your own blind narrative bias for reasoning.
Yeah, there were some people saying that the issues were due to the new rules, but this seems much more believable, reporting three numbers instead of one shouldn't fuck up things, but it did. That means things were fucked before but we didn't know.
So we're just ignoring that the Buttigieg campaign had ties to the developer, period. That's what leaves me with unease.
This could be pinned to the top of the thread in size 20 Bold font and people still wouldn't read it
a primary is a normal election. you go, you vote, you leave. a caucus is a dumbass event where you stand in different corners of a high school gym with your candidate's other supporters, people make some speeches to try and get more people to come to their corner, they do a head count, and then every group that has under 15% of the people in the room gets dissolved and they have to go to different corners to support different candidates (or leave). it's basically a really dumb way of doing ranked choice voting.
Isn't this more of a state thing where Iowa as a state enjoys the attention of the presidential candidates? In that sense we would likely see Democrats and Republican iowan politicians block any attempt to stop caucuses.
It's much less rural than you think, and getting more urban every year. Race is only one metric (which is not to say that it isn't important) and it is one that has moved towards the mean since that paper was published.
Caucuses are about more than just nominating a presidential candidate. They are party events that determine delegates to county/district/state conventions (and eventually on to the national convention,) develop party platforms, identify potential volunteers, demonstrate campaign organizational strength, and yes, nominate a presidential candidate.
Complaining that they're outdated or non-democratic only makes sense if you think democracy requires a popular vote. Caucuses are meant to do more than what a party can do via a primary.
I don't think it's even possible to rig the numbers in a caucus like this.
Okay so what's your contention here? Cause it sure seems like you're doing everything short of accusing Petes campaign of benefitting somehow from their "financial involvement". Please, in your words, explain to me how that would play out. What would be this benefit?
A caucus is a series of public meetings held across a state in gymnasiums, churches, etc. People will make speeches on behalf of the campaigns, People will then be grouped with the candidate they are voting for. If a candidate fails to get 15% of the vote, their people can go with another candidate. This Is used to determine delegate allocations.
(more or less)
Which is why all this rigging conspiracy is kinda dumb because SHOCK the votes are all public. Its just taking an inordinate amount of time to tabulate.
We're dealing with choosing a government, stop trying to make excuses for it.
I'm sorry where exactly did Jeff Weaver push to use an app to conduct delegation reporting? I don't know why you're dragging him in this.
I feel like the whole "personal" aspect of the caucus ended up being a lot more lackluster in practice. Our venue was so packed during the first alignment that there was basically no opportunity to actually win people over until the crowd started thinning.
It's also really weird how delegates are chosen at the end. It's basically "Whoever stays can be a delegate".
Microsoft, a trillion dollar corporation forgot to renew a ssl certificate that literally grounded a app with 20 million users, most of them part of a business. I'm just saying.
Honestly this isn't a big deal, it's fucking Iowa for crying out loud. (No offense to Iowa but like this stuff seems designed to be funky and uselessly crazy)
By that measure the Bernie campaign is financially involved with Amazon because they bought office supplies from them.
- The issue wasn't just the app, in fact they state that was a minor issue, the issue is that this is the first time they're reporting three separate numbers
- The issue is when they rallied up the numbers, going from first count to second count, there were discrepancies. THIS IS HUMAN ERROR. And like Chris Hayes mentioned, since this is the first time they're counting all three, who knows for how long this has been an issue
- an unverified tweet claims Petes campaign paid the company which developed the app money. Companies sometimes make more than one product.
- The Iowa Democratic Party was in charge of this election. Not the DNC.
That sounds... really inefficient and prone to errors. Especially if they are literally doing a head count.
They should just straight up use ranked choice voting.
in that tweet jeff weaver is quoted as saying "the whole process has been a fraud for a hundred years," which sounds an awful lot to me like he's Big Mad About Caucuses, Not Apps. if he really felt that way he should have pushed to get rid of the process when the DNC literally invited Bernie and Company to help make decisions about this shit.
My understanding is that a primary is just like voting in elections, you go in to a polling place, cast your vote, and leave.
With this next paragraph I want to state that I may be wrong about certain parts and invite anyone with more knowledge to correct me.
Caucuses are these local events where everyone who is going to be voting gathers at the polling place and has to remain there, casting their ballots in person, though the means differ. Sometimes it's having everyone stand in groups representing their chosen candidate, other times its actual ballots. In the case of Iowa they say who their first choice is and who their alternate choices are, though there apparently can be changing of minds. Alternate choices exist because if a candidate fails to garner 15% of those assembled at that caucus site then the person needs to pick from the candidates that have hit 15% or higher. The caucus for the Democratic party uses some sort of proportional system for allocating delegates, not a winner take all system.
There have been a lot of complaints about the caucus system over the years. That only the most truly dedicated can do it, as it takes HOURS, in the evening and into the night when people might have other responsibilities, like kids. Primaries are more inclusive. Iowa retains the caucuses because it is part of their political identity and it affords them much greater importance in the candidate selection process than the state should probably have, given their demographics are unrepresentative of the country as a whole. If they went to a primary system they'd no longer be first, since New Hampshire has first dibs under current rules.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020...sques-serve-caucus-sites-200203194831339.html
"Four years ago, Mohamed Ali, a volunteer with the Bernie Sanders campaign, said it was hard getting those in his community to take part in caucuses in the US state of Iowa.
"They just didn't have the confidence" or they felt uncomfortable, Ali, who is a Palestinian-American real estate agent in the Des Moines area, told Al Jazeera by phone. Others, he said, didn't want to be involved in politics for fear of being targeted or discriminated against.
But this year participation of the Arab-Muslim community "has been huge ... it's been really amazing", he said."
I think this year's election is going to have the largest voter turnout in American history.
"Four years ago, Mohamed Ali, a volunteer with the Bernie Sanders campaign, said it was hard getting those in his community to take part in caucuses in the US state of Iowa.
"They just didn't have the confidence" or they felt uncomfortable, Ali, who is a Palestinian-American real estate agent in the Des Moines area, told Al Jazeera by phone. Others, he said, didn't want to be involved in politics for fear of being targeted or discriminated against.
But this year participation of the Arab-Muslim community "has been huge ... it's been really amazing", he said."
I think this year's election is going to have the largest voter turnout in American history.
A primary is a popular vote for a candidate to be the party's nominee.
A caucus is a party meeting to determine various party business, such as; identifying delegates to county/district/state party conventions, develop platforms, identify potential volunteers, demonstrate campaign organizational strength, and even vote for a presidential candidate to be the party's nominee.
It is! It also makes it really hard for people to participate. Normal elections are hard enough for regular folks. Caucuses take that to another level.
More accurately they use Amazon's Twitch.tv as a platform for speeches
The decision to have a caucus or a primary is a state party decision.
I come from a place where no part of the democratic process is handled on a by-contract basis. The idea of a political campaign paying any money to the folks that manufacture our electronic ballot boxes would be absurd, scandalous. (You should get some, by the way. We use them country-wide and results are tallied almost instantly.)
There's no acceptable level for the perception of conflict of interest in the democratic process. "What's up with this?".
It's... complicated. It all goes back to the fact that political primaries are actually fairly recent developments politically, starting in full swing in 1972. Western and Midwestern states that were more spread out didn't want to pay for separate statewide political primaries, so they went with the caucuses, which sorta existed in one way or form for a while, and shoehorned them into the primary process for actually selecting delegates.
Now that most states do their own non-November statewide elections from time to time its really high time it's been scrapped, but its a tradition at this point.
Weaver is full of shit anyway, he defended caucuses as being more democratic in 2016 because Hillary was trouncing them everywhere else
Good god this is annoying. Par for the course I guess. Just finished Chapo's most recent live show (rad) and Pod Save America's show(like the show but some of the idiots they interview... holy hell). Fuck people in the US (and in general) annoy me.
What? Why are you ignoring multiple posts telling you that Pete wasn't involved in the process? No one here is even contending that money in politics is good. Pete's campaign paid the company to make an entirely separate app for them and youre continuing to frame it as though he paid them for something to do with the caucus.
Iowa should 100% be done with this first state shit. Shot your shot; worthy you are not. Just fucking shameful.
Best thing about Iowa is Field of Dreams.
Best thing about Iowa is Field of Dreams.
This is the first year they're NOT just sending in whatever they think the final numbers are. That's why they wanted all these checks and proof this time.
However, this is not the first year they've had to go and wake up precint chairs to get the numbers. This happens with caucuses.
We haven't even gotten to caucuses where local ties are resolved with coin flips.
As for the "small world" factor, it won't be the last time. People will be connected here and there, not everything is a red string leading to "aha!"
This is also not the DNC in operation here. People need to stop doing a disservice to the community by spreading assumptions. There have been problems with caucuses throughout elections past and present, the frustration with them is nothing new in the US.
I have slight faith. There's a paper trail. And literally every single candidate's internal polling. Which will be compared against the results. Also, hundreds of witnesses at from every precinct who can confirm if what's reported is true.
Nothing is going to be rigged in this one. Just Iowa Dems shooting themselves in the foot for being incompetent.
Nothing is going to be rigged in this one. Just Iowa Dems shooting themselves in the foot for being incompetent.
New Hampshire doesn't use the caucus system, no need. It'll be run like any other election.
What would it take for caucuses to stop being a thing altogether? Would it require separate rulings in each State that holds them?
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