Full Reading: Week 4, Section 2

Change in Nominations? End of Caucuses?

Dr. Steffen Schmidt 

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Every four years defenders and detractors of the Iowa caucuses voice their positions. Recommendations for improving the presidential selection process have included conducting a national primary in which all fifty states and the territories hold their primaries or caucuses on the same day. Another suggestion has been to hold “regional” primaries in the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, Southwest, and Northwest or some such regional grouping. That would give venues other than Iowa and New Hampshire early and significant roles in the selection process. Specifically, it would force candidates to campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire but also spend considerable time in the next cluster of contests.

Still another suggestion has been to let the most populous and diverse states go first. That would mean California, Texas, New York, Florida, New York, and Illinois would hold their primaries on the same day, say in January of election year. They would be followed by the next set of states by population – Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Georgia. Iowa would actually be 30^th in line and New Hampshire 42^nd.  The disadvantage of this would be the burden on candidates having to travel to distant and expensive–to-campaign states. Only the most well funded candidates could manage such a scenario.

One important quality of the caucus presidential candidate selection process is the personal, face-to-face interaction of voters in each precinct with their fellow party members. A second valued characteristic is that the caucuses also offer opportunities to discuss and vote on party platform issues. The input from the grassroots can help a party better shape its positions on issues by linking these to the concerns of people in the community.

One criticism of the caucuses is that many voters find it difficult to attend for personal reasons. Therefore, turnout is a very small percentage of those eligible to participate.

Today it’s possible to overcome the obstacles while preserving the best of the caucus process. We have done several pilot projects testing the use of Skype and other simple conferencing technologies as tools for bringing caucus members who cannot physically attend “into the room” so to speak. Each person eligible to attend and vote would simply be issued a password to log in. There would also be provisions for same night registration for those wishing to attend but not registered with the respective party. Our conclusion is that it would certainly be possible to use modern communications and information technology (CIT) perhaps to allow voters with mobility problems or disabilities to participate.

The most widely accepted future of the Iowa caucuses is that they need to be more precise in reporting the votes in each precinct. There has also been a suggestion, which is still being debated inside the political parties, to actually select delegates (based on the size of each caucus) to the state party convention. That would more directly connect the caucuses to the final delegate selection of each party in Iowa.

One thing is clear. There will continue to be push and pull between the states as to who should be first in the nation.

[i] iowapoliticalcaucus.blogspot.com Links to an external site.

[i]http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2008/2008_08_205 Links to an external site.

[iii] McCutcheon v. Fed. Election Comm'n, 893 F. Supp. 2d 133 (D.D.C. 2012) [2012 BL 251166] 

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Full videos

• Interview with David Oman, Former Chief of Staff of Governor Terry Branstad and eminent caucus expert