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Have We Seen the Last Iowa Caucus?
The Iowa Democratic Party is in disarray after its debacle Monday night. They had four years to prepare for their first-in-the-nation Caucuses; as the night draws to a close they have no results, no explanation for their failure, and no excuses.
The results of the Republican caucuses came in fast, showing Trump the overwhelming winner. After hours of silence, the Democrats said they are delaying any results. “We found inconsistencies in the reporting of three sets of results,” communications director Mandy McClure said. “In addition to the tech systems being used to tabulate results, we are also using photos of results and a paper trail to validate that all results match and ensure that we have confidence and accuracy in the numbers we report.”
This, after bragging about how ready they were for this pivotal night.
In preparation for one of the most consequential elections of our lifetimes, we have taken historic steps to ensure a secure, accessible, and transparent caucus process. #IACaucus https://t.co/XY61GJ9AAD
— Iowa Democrats (@iowademocrats) February 3, 2020
We have staff on the ground working to help protect the integrity of our democratic process. And we’re doing everything we can to make sure Iowans’ voices are heard and the caucuses are secure. https://t.co/UJSQGQoiPA
— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) February 3, 2020
Their website claimed the results would be posted after 7 p.m. CT. Below the declaration, a long line of zeroes. During an emergency phone call with the campaigns, one participant shouted, “This is an unbelievable explanation.” Another person added, “I think he speaks for all of us.”
Joe Biden’s general counsel quickly sent a letter to the state’s party leaders. “The app that was intended to relay Caucus results to the Party failed; the Party’s back-up telephonic reporting system likewise has failed,” she wrote. “Now, we understand that caucus chairs are attempting to — and, in many cases, failing to — report results telephonically to the party. These acute failures are occurring statewide.”
It’s past time for Iowa to end its bizarre, arbitrary, and confusing voting rules. After tonight, the national parties will demand it.
Published in Elections, Politics
Lowry, as has become typical for NR, is so enamored of his own cleverness that he’s missing the point. The Democrats will do anything to get the results the Party has ordained. Actually, the Democrats are right: It’s all Trump’s fault. If he hadn’t won, nobody would have even known that there was a coverup. But Trump won, and forced the Democrats to stage a coup.
Even the people reporting on the coup have a hard time staying away from the multiple Big Lies. For example, Gateway Pundit and Laura Ingraham refer to Eric Ciaramella as the “suspected whistleblower.” But calling what He Who Must Not be Named did “blowing the whistle” is a Big Lie. Nevertheless, this is an important story:
The primary/caucus system was always a joke.
State parties may determine standards for local offices, but national party representatives should require simultaneous primaries in all states for national offices. That is the only way to equalize votes in all states. As it stands, voters in later states are strongly influenced by poll results from early states.
Iowans choose between a dozen candidates with blank tallies. Texans choose between two or three frontrunners. The votes of early states are more significant.
At least I can start answering my phone again instead of letting the answering machine take the call.
This is the first news I’ve had of the Iowa caucus. I wonder I’d they had any voter suppression.
I did some research because, to be honest, I had no idea what happens at a caucus. This might be useful info, especially if the caucuses are no more. As best I can figure, this is what goes on:
Who can participate? Anyone can show up at any location. Except for Earl and Martha Guldenbach who are just so damned annoying what with their blather about crop circles and all.
What happens at a caucus? It is done in rounds called “alignments” each with a separate procedure.
First Alignment: A representative for each candidate moves to separate parts of the room, holds up an ear of corn painted red and stands on one leg. Caucus goers then must hop to the representative whose candidate they favor. The three groups with the most supporters must begin to dance while others with the fewest votes go to the “Ah Shucks” table where they eat puppy chow, drink pop and talk about the weather for about 10-45 minutes depending on local rules.
Second Alignment: Each representative of the surviving candidates must reveal a funny story about their candidate and it has to rhyme. Afterward, they each hold upright a large pole which their supporters must all touch at the same time. Any caucus-goers who refuse to join the second alignment become election officials and count only those who are touching each pole to provide the final official tally.
Delegate selection. (Numbers below are for Democratic party. For GOP, divide by two.) Those who showed up with the most printed materials and buttons are then appointed delegates and join 26,532 the delegates to the respective county party conventions. The county conventions then select the 16,132 who will go to the state convention who in turn will select 56 delegates to the Democratic National convention most of whom will be members of the legislature, their relatives and donors no matter what happened at the caucuses.
Be a shame if this wonderful bit of Americana were to be lost to newfangled voting processes.
This is too important to leave up to mere voters. Hillary will save the Party yet!
OldB,
But you’ve to know the territory.
Regards,
Jim
The Clinton Foundation hasn’t been doing so well lately. Joe Biden managed to do pretty well for his whole family in eight years, and he was just the Vice President. Hillary needs to secure her, ah, legacy.
Some of that is on purpose. See the Stave Bannon theory.
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/02/steve_bannon_lays_out_a_shocking_scenario_of_the_real_reason_behind_bloombergs_investment_of_2_billion_in_politics.html
Bloomberg is doing a buyout of the Democrat Party.
Michael Bloomberg, who really now you’re seeing an oligarch come in here, an oligarch that has committed $2 billion not to make himself president, $2 billion just to defeat Donald Trump.
And here’s the thing.
BARTIROMO: You don’t think he wants to be president?
BANNON: I think he — look, he knows he’s not going to beat Donald Trump. He knows he’s not going to win the nomination.
BARTIROMO: You said he wants to be something else, not…
(CROSSTALK)
BANNON: He’s — he’s basically doing a leveraged buyout of the Democratic Party, is what he’s doing.
He’s an LBO of the Democratic Party to control the Democratic Party to select who their candidate is going to be and use his capital, OK, and organization and technology to defeat Trump.
Bernie supporters are probably more into “Ya Got Trouble” about now:
Is it still a six-way tie?
IDK. I rather like my secret ballot.
Hmm…
OldB,
Damn, if you’re not a poet and didn’t know it.
“There were ringers at the polls but I never heard them lying, no I never heard them at all till there was Bernie.” OK OK, it didn’t quite rhyme but nothing else has worked right in Iowa so cut me some slack.
Regards,
Jim
The Democratic National Committee just issued this statement:
The nature of a caucus (getting up and walking around aimlessly) does suppress the dead vote, though not as much in the regions mainly populated by zombies, such as Des Moines.
Sounds like this mess won’t be resolved any time soon.
Jon, I don’t see anything bizarre, arbitrary, or confusing about the Iowa caucus process. In many ways, it seems preferable to a simple primary election. As I understand it, it requires active participation, consideration of presentations presented at the caucus locations, and narrowing of the field by winnowing out candidates that have very low support. It seems better suited to building consensus, and allowing participants to express a wider range of preferences, than a primary.
I haven’t yet seen any serious diagnosis of what went wrong for the Democrats last night. The process doesn’t seem very complicated. People move around the room, and you ultimately count them, and then report. Why would that be difficult?
One possibility is simply over-reliance on technology. There was this nifty app, you see, which was going to count everything up automatically. So perhaps no one bothered to keep paper records, so when the app failed, no one could agree about the results. One would think that the precinct captains for each of the candidates would work together to agree as to the counts, write it down, and sign. This, however, relies on good faith and fair play. Perhaps these virtues are lacking among Democrats at the moment.
People do get over-reliant on technology. I sometimes think that the Millenials and GenZ would be unable to find their own way home from school or work, if the Map App on their phone were to fail.
Math is racist. If you accurately count votes, the right candidate might lose.
Olc,
You have uncovered a fundamental belief of woketards everywhere. Keep up the good work.
Regards,
Jim
(smiling) Are you sure it is that well organized?
For the general election, definitely! But for primaries, you’ve already signaled your intentions to vote for a Republican when you walk into the caucus room. And, really, when you write your preferred candidate’s name on a scrap of paper, it’s pretty anonymous.
It’s a room full of like-minded people debating and choosing their candidates. It feels pretty safe.
My nephew the astrophysicist calls it “peak technology.”
Operation Orca, Mitt Romney. All of this sounds strangely familiar.
Well half is better than none right? That should clear things up.
Then again maybe it depends on your point of view.
Fixed it for you. Bernie Sanders cannot be allowed to win. ;)
We would know exactly how all this was planned and executed, if only Hillary had not bit bleached her computers.
We can certainly have fun today and laugh at these folks.
But this was not a mistake. This was an intended feature.
Late last night, even as this was going down, my twitter feed was filled with people, who I never witnessed on twitter before, talking about how mean Bernie Sanders is, and how maybe there is room for Hillary in the list of candidates.
Okay, so again, we can still make fun of all of this. But these people run the voting processes in Calif, New York, Illinois and many other parts of our nation.
This should be wake up call to everyone here who wants their vote to count next November. We need E-verify, we need to return to each voter receiving a paper ballot and a pen. (And if you are in Calif, I already realize we re given those – but the paper ballot and its inked in votes are counted on electronic machinery.)
There is a lesson for us in how in Jan 2017 a judge in San Diego county ruled in favor of voting activists, that the DNC flipped Bernie’s Primary victory electronically, giving Hillary the votes needed for her team to declare her the winner. If the DNC cheats its own party members ,what do you think is gonna happen in November with those Republicans on the ballot?