Iowa caucus explainer
by Tom Sullivan
Muscatine in 1865, by Barber and Howe (The Loyal West in the Times of the Rebellion)
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Okay, I don’t know from Iowa. Although, in college I had a housemate from Muscatine. At least, that’s what she said. And once, back when the speed limit was 55 mph, I drove across Iowa. Alone. At night. The road signs said Iowa. But it was dark. I sort of had to take Iowa on faith.
Kind of like understanding how tonight’s Iowa caucuses work. NPR has an explainer for how this all works:
It’s essentially a neighborhood meeting of sorts — for politically active, like-minded people. Unlike the kind of voting most people are used to — which only takes a few minutes and involves pushing a button or pulling a lever in the secrecy of a voting booth — Iowans have to devote an hour or so of their evenings to the process. The caucuses on the Democratic side are also much more out in the open — everyone knows who you voted for and possibly why. This is why ardency of support is important. That’s because in Democratic caucuses, you don’t vote with your fingers, you vote with your feet. (More on that in our long answer below.) For Republicans in Iowa, the process is much simpler and more orderly. Someone from the campaigns might speak for their candidate, but then voting happens by an informal secret ballot. Think: Folded over pieces of paper passed in and collected.
Read on. For Democrats, there’s a 15 percent threshold for candidates in the first count or they are not considered viable. Pull the plug.
That’s still a little vague, so Vermont Public Radio illustrates the process with Legos.
Seems like a suspicious number of Bernie supporter types in that Vermont Public Radio video.