2020 Election

Yeah, it's like groundhog day. I for one find it disturbing that we allow two such unrepresentative underpopulated rural states such important roles in the nomination process.

 

NH is next week
I hope your dude has a good showing today!

Caucuses are such a weird concept. So old fashioned

 

I would prefer if all states held their primary the same day
I dont really like the concept of voting for someone just because they have "momentum" because they won some low population early states that will go red in the general anyways

 

Christ me too. Why are the primaries marathons when the actual election is a single day?

Why is Iowa the most important state?

 

Iowa lol

Hey @neonspectraltoast arent you in Iowa? Are you caucusing?
I have so many questions about what it's like to caucus

 

cock cussing.

 

No, Melial. I haven't even seen any information. I don't know how to vote; I don't know where to go to vote. I didn't even realize it was today until yesterday. What even is caucusing? Is it voting? I might head down to the courthouse tonight and see what's up...see if it's too late to register.

 

Who knows really. Something about, instead of casting a vote on paper or a computer like a normal state, you have to go stand in a crowded room filled with people for hours and vote with your physical person.
Such an odd way of doing things

Probably too late to register to participate in the caucus but please please register to vote before the general!

 

But thanks to McConnell and Trump it is full of Shenanigans.

 

A very archaic method for supposedly a modern democracy !!!

 

I don't get something here. The votes aren't cast on paper or in digital form and counted like that?

 

In a caucus the loudest group wins....

 

Not in a caucus.
I'm not sure exactly how it works but I know it involves standing with other people who support said candidate.
And supporters of candidates who dont get 15% of the overall support then have to go stand with their second choice candidate.

It takes hours and I imagine it really discourages participation. Off the bat, people with disabilities or parents of small children or people who work when the caucuses are held and cant get time off work arent able to participate

 

Instead of going to a polling place, standing in line, filling out your ballot, and dropping it in a tabulation machine, in an Iowa caucus, you go to a kind of meeting at yur precinct location. There are no ballots, since people aren't voting on candidates but instead are voting on delegates who support candidates. When you enter, you receive a card on which to write your first and second choices. Then you go into a room to hear speeches from the caucus leaders for the various candidates. Each candidate then has a designated area where supporters gather, and the voters go to the area of their first choice candidate. The caucus leaders do a head count of how many people are gathered in each group. Any candidate who passes a "viability threshold" of 15% of all the caucus goers present, those folks considered to have their support "locked in" for the given candidate and the candidate is "viable". Supporters of non-viable candidates (who have 14% or less supporters lined up) can then either try to persuade others to join their group, join another viable group, or join with other supporters of non-viable candidates behind their second choice. Here, the best-organized campaigns with the best-trained workers have a big advantage in attracting support in the realignment process.
The number of people in each viable group after realignment determines how many delegates--awarded proportionally-- each candidate wins from the precinct. Then the state calculates how delegates from the 1, 678 precincts translate into state delegate equivalents for allocating Iowa's 41 pledged national delegates for the Democrat National Convention. Clear? (Don't ask me to repeat it.)

 

Well I guess that's a better explanation than mine lol

 

So who do you support Okiefreak?

 

Oh wow. Thought caucus was the same as a primary. Ok, so we won't know anything till NH. Iowa seems like a formality at this point.

That's seriously what a caucus is @Okiefreak ? That's stupid

 

Biden, although "support" might be too strong a word.

 

I agree, this sounds disturbingly stupid.

 

Like the ec.
I don't know why NH, and Iowa get so much airtime.
They are two of the top four states with the least amount of diversity.
NH- 95% white
Iowa- 93% white