Caucus

Am I pleased with the results? Partly. Am I impressed by my fellow Iowa voters? Not at all, and in fact I am considerably less impressed by the caucusing system than I was four years ago.

My precinct, known as 3-5, was set to have its caucus in an auditorium in the Scheman Building. This auditorium, by the way, was not even remotely wheelchair-accessible, which would pose problems later that night. I came with my mom and dad (ducking all the Edwards people with free sandwiches along the way) and stood in a long, very disorganized line for five minutes in order to get this little white sticker. It didn't even say anything on it. I could have easily just walked in without it.

Anyhow, the auditorium was absolutely packed (close to 500 people) and moreover was a huge mess. I made my way over to the Obama camp, only to discover that pretty much everyone was scattered throughout. After about 15 minutes of sitting around and not seeing anyone I recognized, the caucus finally began. A lot of really mundane stuff was accomplished--electing people to run the caucus and working out the details of how we were going to split up. The final decision was that anyone not supporting the top 3 candidates would have to leave the auditorium and go elsewhere.

I didn't see this, being part of the Obama camp, but apparently Dodd, Kucinich, Gravel and Biden were immediately out of the running. Those who chose to support them were forced to realign themselves with a different candidate (the cutoff is that any candidate that gets less than 15% is disqualified), and much bribing and coercing was done, particularly by Obama supporters, to get them to come to their side. After that was finally all done (and that in itself took like half an hour, as no one seemed to know where to go), we finally got the totals, which amounted to something like 40% Obama, 30% Edwards, 25% Clinton and 5% other. So we won, which was good, but it took forever to count heads and what's more someone could have easily miscounted.

After delegates were chosen, most everyone left, and I stayed around for a little bit to hear if any interesting platforms were to be raised. Turns out no, everyone just wanted to go home. So that was my caucus.

I was happy to see Obama win, and even more happy to see Clinton in third place. I was not really happy with Mike Huckabee's victory, but I can't really think of anyone much better at present. Still, though, I can't believe how meaningless this all is, and how completely undemocratic it is on top of that. You want proof? Decide for yourself:

-Shills for the candidates were outside of Scheman giving away free sandwiches and cookies, all presumably in the name of their preferred candidate.
-Candidates with less than 15% of the vote were ineligible, and those that chose to support them could not do so, not even with a write-in vote.
-Furthermore, as Ricky told me, the less popular candidates tried to threaten the Obama campaign into giving up enough of their members to constitute 15%, or else they would defect to Clinton. This is horrifying.
-By counting heads as opposed to using a secret ballot, voters could be openly harassed for expressing their views. I actually think that the republican caucus does this better, because they do a normal ballot.
-Also, counting heads leaves a lot of room for error, and people had to recount several times.

This whole process needs to be dropped altogether. It's absolutely unconscionable that we as a nation have decided on a system that disqualifies one's views unless they happen to be shared by a certain percentage of other people. That's not democracy. That's a bunch of bullshit.

At the very least, take it out of Iowa. All I saw yesterday was white bread, white bread, white bread. Are these people really the ones that should be deciding the future of our country?