Iowa Caucuses

The Iowa caucuses will begin in just a few hours, and I wanted to put my thoughts about the process of how we chose our presidential candidates on record before they start.

In a word, it sucks.

Powerline expressed my thoughts exactly

I guess there could be a worse way to kick off the presidential selection process than having 100,000 or so Iowans (per party) weigh in following lengthy meetings, but it's hard to imagine what that would be.[source]

The entire Iowa caucus is a bit bizarre epically the Democrat side. The Huffington Post has a good article if you want to know more about how votes are cast and re-cast and then weighted. (We will not ever know the true vote count in Iowa)

Not that I have a disdain towards caucuses in general. I actually prefer then over primaries for two reasons.

1) The people at caucuses care about their party. It is more effort to attend an hour or two meeting that will help decide the direction of the political party than it does to show up at a polling place, pull a lever and leave. Many primary's don't even check party affiliation so independents and even members of other parties can show up and vote in any party's primary. The party faithful should determine their party's candidate.

2) Caucuses breed participation. Our country is served better when regular people participate in the political process. Caucuses tend to pull people into the process while primaries do not. Many times people are recruited within the caucus meetings. This is a good thing for the parties and for the political process as a whole. Primaries simply benefit the party elite.

Having said that the weight the Media (and the candidates because of that) put on the first caucus and even New Hampshire primaries is ridiculous. Why do Iowans and New Hampshirites (if that's what their called) get more weight when it comes to deciding presidential candidates?

The Parties need to come up with a new system. We should probably do our caucuses and/or primaries on the same day.