Democratic caucuses and primaries

"Iowa? However said Iowa was important!? Show me were anyone said Iowa was important!" revisionist history it is.
 
JoeMorgue said:
Video appears to show a precinct in Des Moine deciding a delegate tie between Sanders and Buttigeig with a coin flip.

https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/iowa-caucuses-live-results-coverage-2020/index.html
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What does the outcome of the coin flip actually determine? How to appropriate a single delegate when there are an odd number or something?

And, if so, what is the alternate solution? Cut the delegates in half?

(delegates are actual people, of course, who go on to vote in the next round)
 
Ziggurat said:
Why? This failure doesn't resemble any previous Iowa caucus outcome.

[qimg]https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/voting_software.png[/qimg]
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This screw up was largely the result on a very poor attempt to modernize the extremely low-tech caucus system.

A very robust alternative exists. A primary system with paper ballots and automated counting, with hand counting as a backup.

If Iowa wants to maintain the "nonviable candidates can re-allocate their votes" system, the supposed benefit of a caucus, then they can implement a ranked choice voting system.

There's no reason that people need to spend an entire evening standing around in some gym to express their voting intentions.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
This screw up was largely the result on a very poor attempt to modernize the extremely low-tech caucus system.

A very robust alternative exists. A primary system with paper ballots and automated counting, with hand counting as a backup.

If Iowa wants to maintain the "nonviable candidates can re-allocate their votes" system, the supposed benefit of a caucus, then they can implement a ranked choice voting system.

There's no reason that people need to spend an entire evening standing around in some gym to express their voting intentions.
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That's for Iowans to decide, but this specific failure isn't really indicative of the merits or demerits of a caucus system.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
There's no reason that people need to spend an entire evening standing around in some gym to express their voting intentions.
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It's gatekeeping. "If you don't care enough to take the night off / get a baby sitter / etc then we don't want your opinion" which does not translate as well into the general election as something which is more functionally like the general election.
 
JoeMorgue said:
It's very possible there legitimately wasn't one, that just highlights how absurd this whole thing is.
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Why?

There are a set number of delegates, they get proportioned in a specific way. There is a chance that two candidates will have an equal number of supporters. If the delegates is odd, there has to be a method of deciding who gets the extra delegate. It's not absurd, it's math.

I also like the idea of the percentile dice, so everyone has a chance, but a coin flip is as good as anything, and better than, again, your non-solution.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, forget the caucus and make it a primary. Well it isn't, so you have to deal with the situation you have.
 
Seriously, what is the holdup now?

Even assuming the caucus app has catastrophically failed, enough time has passed to have done this the old fashioned way, either by hand delivering the completed forms or by calling them in.
 
JoeMorgue said:
It's gatekeeping. "If you don't care enough to take the night off / get a baby sitter / etc then we don't want your opinion" which does not translate as well into the general election as something which is more functionally like the general election.
Click to expand...

It's an non-representative state voting in an intentionally low-turnout way, but they're first, so they matter for some reason.

Stuff like this drives me to drink.
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
Seriously, what is the holdup now?

Even assuming the caucus app has catastrophically failed, enough time has passed to have done this the old fashioned way, either by hand delivering the completed forms or by calling them in.
Click to expand...
The old way required drilling the people running it to do it and even then, prone to issues. This time they were drilled on the new way. That failed and now they had to learn the "backup" old way with minimal familiarity.
 
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