The time may be rapidly approaching for a national dialogue about the respective merits of caucuses and primaries as a basis for selecting delegates who will vote at Republican and Democratic Party national presidential conventions. The caucuses no longer function effectively in a country where information is widely available at low cost and where transportation to primary facilities is plentiful and low cost:
“The caucus system is taking a bruising this year, beginning with Iowa getting its own winner wrong and continuing through Nevada, where voters clashed with volunteers, grumbled about the disorganization and in several instances reportedly chased journalists from voting locations. ” Stephan Dinan, ‘ Voters rebelling against caucuses’, The Washington Times, February 8, 2012
At least 10 states and three territories plan to use caucuses to choose their delegates to the Republican presidential nominating convention in Tampa, Florida later this year. They do so knowing that caucuses require a bigger investment in time for those who participate, since those who caucus must turn out to listen to speeches about the candidates before they vote their choices.
This investment in time is designed to limit voting to party activists who, frequently, are located in the relevant tail of the voter distribution, and whose opinions are not reflective of the state’s median voter for the relevant political party.
In essence, individuals with very strong preference intensities tend to caucus, while the large majority of the Party’s registered voters fail to participate. The biased vote may then influence the national convention into selecting a candidate who does not reflect the interests of the median voter.
To illustrate the extent of the caucus entry restriction, a bare 4 percent of Iowans voted in the Republican caucus in early January 2012, whereas 19 percent of New Hampshire residents voted in that state’s primary just one week later. Iowa is especially bound to the caucus system because it guarantees the state the first nomination contest and the millions of dollars that flow into the state as a consequence.
Some states go back and forth between caucuses and primaries. Some states utilize both at the same time. For example, in 2008, Texas held a caucus and a primary on the same day. Hillary Clinton won the primary but Barack Obama won the caucuses, and collected a majority of the state’s delegates through that process.
If one believes in democracy, in the sense of one-man, one-vote, the caucus should be discarded, and all states should choose their delegates on the basis of primaries restricted to registered voters. Each voter would be limited to voting in one primary for one political party. Which primary they choose should be a matter for their own political calculus.
Tags: anti-median bias in the caucus, caucus, election bias, entry barriers to delegate selection, primary
