Iowa Caucus

[PADemD]

What method is used in counting votes? Paper ballot? Machine?

[Pirate Smile]

1. They count bodies.

:)

[jsamuel]

2. yep

[question everything]

3. I participated in 1988 so perhaps there are some changes

First, there is no secret ballot. You have to stand up and be counted.

So you have a room and people who support Clinton stand in one corner, the ones who support Obama, in anther corner and so forth.

Each candidate has to have at least 15% of the votes of that caucus to be viable. If not, these supporters now are being courted by the other candidate to join them.

The one who has the most votes win.

In my caucus in 1988, in a suburb which was of moderate Democrats, Gephardt - who finally won Iowa - but not the nomination - was not even viable. Jesse Jackson, however, was. We finally flipped a coin - yes - and Babbit won ours.

[PADemD]

4. Thanks!

[frazzled]

5. But the number of bodies counted is NOT the basis for the percentages reported

I never knew this. Via an op-ed in today's NYT:

An early order of business in each Democratic precinct caucus in Iowa is a count of the candidate preferences of the attendees. For all practical purposes, this is just what the polls try to measure. But Iowa Democrats keep the data hidden. The one-person, one-vote results from each caucus are snail-mailed to party headquarters and placed in a database, never disclosed to the press or made available for inspection.

Instead, the Democratic Party releases the percentage of “delegate equivalents” won by each candidate. The percentage broadcast on the networks and reported in the newspapers is the candidate’s share of the 2,500 delegates the party apportions across Iowa’s 99 counties, based on Democratic voter turnout in each of the 1,784 precincts in the two most recent general elections. So, the turnout for a candidate in a precinct caucus could be huge, yet the candidate’s share of the delegate pie could be quite small — if that precinct had low voter turnout in 2004 and 2006.

Under the formulas used to apportion delegates, it is possible that the candidate with the highest percentage of delegate equivalents — that is, the headline “winner” — did not really lead in the “popular vote” at the caucuses.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/opinion/18cranberg.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

[MaineDem]

6. You're not quite correct

The bodies counted are the basis for the allocation of delegates.

The number of total delegates per precinct is based on previous voting history. Once the number of delegates is known for a particular caucus, the number allocated to each candidate is done based on the number of caucus-goers supporting that candidate. There's a formula used to determine the allocation.

Here's the actual formula:



# of members in a preference group X Total # of delegates elected at the caucus = # of delegates
------------------------------------------------------------------------------ to be elected
Total # of eligible caucus attendees


· Note: The result is rounded up at 0.5 and down at less than 0.5.

I can't get the formula to format correctly but it's the # of voters for one candidate Times the #of delegates to be elected at the caucus divided by the # of eligible voters at the caucus.

[frazzled]

7. The point is: those original body count numbers are never revealed to the public

The situation in which the winner of the popular vote does not get the greatest percentage of delegates remains a possibility. Because of the complexity, the media does not inform the public of this. I think it wouldn't matter if the Iowa caucuses were not deemed to have such import ... but in a tight race such as this, a winner with fewer 'popular votes' who nonetheless "wins" the most delegates will have greater momentum than the candidate for whom more caucus goers stood up, but who comes in second or third with delegates because of the formula.

[MaineDem]

8. The candidate with the most votes would win more delegates in each caucus

But it could be a different candidate in each caucus.

It's almost like the national polls now. They mean nothing since each state decides individually on who gets the delegates from its state. The votes aren't lumped together into one national result. Same with precinct caucuses.

If numerous candidates came in first in a few caucuses and another candidate came in second in many more it's possible for that candidate to win more delegates. (As long as he or she met the 15% threshold.)