The Caucus Report

It’s been a few days now since we had the Iowa caucus and I have been trying to get Rob to blog about it since he actually went. I was very interested in going but I had a problem with one part of the process. When it comes to voter registration and party affiliation, I have always been a “decline to state” because I don’t want to pick any party. In California, this was ideal because at the primaries, they allow you to pick whichever ballot you want. Here in Iowa, you have to be a registered Democrat or Republican to participate in the caucus. I mostly lean towards being a Democrat but I don’t feel comfortable with calling myself one. I was thinking that was how I would register though so we could see how each party’s process works in the caucus because they are very different. But when it came down to it, I just couldn’t bring myself to register as either so I stayed home. Rob still promises to give the insider view soon but because I’ve been asked so many times how it works, I thought I’d share some of that info.

Republicans: Everyone has to be at their assigned caucus location and be signed in by 7:00 pm. Then they sit down in a room and write their vote on a piece of paper. The votes are tallied and that’s about it. Rob will give a better idea what happened here since this is the one he participated in.

Democrats: Everyone has to be at their assigned caucus location and be signed in by 6:30 pm. They all go into a big room where there are signs for each candidate and you stand by the sign of the candidate that you want to vote for. If your candidate has less than 15% of the people in the room, then they are not considered viable. These people then have to pick a different candidate and that is where things must get very interesting. The other people in the room go around and try to recruit these people to join them to get more votes for their candidate. Once everyone is settled on a viable candidate, then they count the votes.

It is a pretty confusing process- I asked several native Iowans how it worked and most of them could not tell me. I tried to find stuff on the internet but the websites I found really did not explain it very well. Finally, on caucus day, CNN had a great write-up of the process but that wasn’t until caucus day! It has all been very interesting though and I am glad that I will be able to be a part of it in the future and the Rob already has been a part of it. The best thing about it being over is watching regular commercials again- we have been bombarded with political advertisements since last summer and I am so glad to get a break from that!