Democratic caucuses and primaries

This is probably going to blow back on the impeachment trial, as well. In a vacuum, the trial and tomorrow's expected acquittal could be presented as a moral victory that highlights the perfidy of the GOP.

In the context of the Iowa caucus, it's probably going to end up feeling more like yet another Dem clown show. Most of the people who would be celebrating the moral win in the Senate are going to be at each other's throats over the perceived backstabbing in Iowa.

Vladimir Putin couldn't have engineered a better news cycle for Donald "Will Always Be Impeached" Trump if he'd tried (and some Democrats are already suggesting he did exactly that).
 
SuburbanTurkey said:
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.
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The old-fashioned methods never reported anything other than a final tally of State Delegate Equivalents (SDEs). This year Iowa Dems have promised to report three sets of totals, without any noticeable ****-ups.

:boxedin:

Nate Silver writes:

Maybe there will eventually be a decent-sized Iowa bounce despite all of this. But there’s a good chance that the candidates who did well in Iowa get screwed, and the candidates who did poorly there get a mulligan. To repeat: There’s very little importance in a mathematical sense to who wins 41 delegates. Iowa is all about the media narrative it produces and all about momentum, and that momentum, whoever wins, is likely to have been blunted.
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The big winner here is Biden (who gets the mulligan) and the Bernie Bro conspiracy theorists, who get to freak out about Biden being handed a mulligan at the hands of establishment Dems. Also, NH.
 
'Oh, there's nothing halfway about the Iowa way to treat you,
if they treat you, which they may not do at all"
 
Belz... said:
Gods, I'm so glad Canada still uses paper ballots.
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Maryland used touch screens years ago, but went back to paper, machine-read on site and collected for backup purposes. This sort of thing is *way* too important to rely completely on tech - screen calibration issues and the like present a real problem, never mind possible hacking.

Fun fact - a company I used to work for was contracted to replace various Air Traffic Control systems. Pulled out all the bells and whistles - touch screens for everything, total redesign.

The air traffic controllers *hated* it. It was way too much retraining, and mistakes could prove disastrous. They ended up more or less scrapping the design, and going back to the older control setups. This is what happens when you don't check the UI with actual end users, and it sounds like the Iowa caucus ran into the same damn problem.

Not hard, folks, it's one of the most basic rules of HW/SW design. And for pity's sake, not everything needs to connect to the damn internet.
 
Mumbles said:
Maryland used touch screens years ago, but went back to paper, machine-read on site and collected for backup purposes. This sort of thing is *way* too important to rely completely on tech - screen calibration issues and the like present a real problem, never mind possible hacking.

Fun fact - a company I used to work for was contracted to replace various Air Traffic Control systems. Pulled out all the bells and whistles - touch screens for everything, total redesign.

The air traffic controllers *hated* it. It was way too much retraining, and mistakes could prove disastrous. They ended up more or less scrapping the design, and going back to the older control setups. This is what happens when you don't check the UI with actual end users, and it sounds like the Iowa caucus ran into the same damn problem.

Not hard, folks, it's one of the most basic rules of HW/SW design. And for pity's sake, not everything needs to connect to the damn internet.
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Don't know why it's so hard for people to accept that fairly old technology is probably the best.

Massachussetts uses a paper ballot that requires fill in the bubble. Someone very careless or not too bright could spoil their ballot by filling in too many bubbles, but the process is quite simple and low risk. The ballots can be scanned and tallied rapidly, or counted by hand if needed. It doesn't require the voter to use any complicated machines. It doesn't require the volunteers running the poll site to do much besides hand out and collect the ballots.

There's no reason to use a complicated voter machine that outweighs the various drawbacks of using such a system.

Caucuses is like the exact opposite of what you want in an election process. It requires tremendous effort from the voter. It requires lots of volunteers that understand the silly rules and how to properly "score" the precinct worksheets. Then it requires these many volunteers to transmit the data back to headquarters to be compiled. So many points for failure.
 
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Mumbles said:
Fun fact - a company I used to work for was contracted to replace various Air Traffic Control systems. Pulled out all the bells and whistles - touch screens for everything, total redesign.

The air traffic controllers *hated* it. It was way too much retraining, and mistakes could prove disastrous. They ended up more or less scrapping the design, and going back to the older control setups. This is what happens when you don't check the UI with actual end users, and it sounds like the Iowa caucus ran into the same damn problem.
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I can believe it. My car's a brand new Civic, and instead of the buttons I had on my previous vehicle for climate control, I have to operate the touchscreen, which as you may suspect is quite a bit more dangerous when you're on the road, as with the buttons I didn't even have to look.
 
If you're a political party that would steamroll every election without trying if you could get the below 30 crowd to consistently vote in meaningful numbers technology is your friend not your enemy.

Yes all the complaints, concerns, downsides are still valid but the Republicans have the "Oh I'm scared of my cell phone and don't own a computer" demographic already locked down.

There's no hipster "I'm only going to vote on vinyl" counter demographic on the Left to court here.

At the end of the day you're (metaphorically) making it easier to vote via an 1995 Lincoln Continental with Curb Feelers and a radio tuned to Paul Harvey being driven 35 miles an hour in the fast lane on I-95 then you are via an Uber. And the voting demographic you need the most is a lot more comfortable with the Uber.
 
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Belz... said:
Gods, I'm so glad Canada still uses paper ballots.
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Its easy for us Canadians to use paper ballots because our choices are so simple: One question: who do you want as an MP. (We don't even technically vote for our prime minister... he just happens to be the one who's party gets the most MPs.)

In the U.S. they have multiple questions: Who to be president? Who to be congress critter(s)? Plus, any referendums? Other offices (like judges)?

All that can in theory give the voter more control, but it also makes the ballot a bit more complex. Having electronic ballots, etc. might streamline the process (assuming it can be done in a secure manor, which is questionable).
 
Belz... said:
- "In the event of a tie, roll 4D6+5" ... wait, what?
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So,here's what I read on the internet, and if you can't trust the internet, who can you trust?

They count the votes, come up with a fraction of total votes for each candidate, multiply by number of delegates, and that's how many each candidate gets. Except, what about fractions? If Joe gets 4.6 delegates and Amy gets 3.4 delegates, what then? Some of you might see an obvious answer, but that's not how they do things in Iowa. Instead, all fractional delegates are settled by coin flip, regardless of the size of the fractions.

Percentile dice would be cooler.


And if you roll 00, you get +5 debating skill.

Or, these are delegates to a state convention, not actual candidates. Maybe they should get +5 alcohol resistance.
 
Someone in media finally made the joke I had been waiting for;That so far the Iowa caucauses are like the Caucus race in "Alice In Wonderland":They are all running to stay in the same place, and they all will want a prize.
 
dudalb said:
Someone in media finally made the joke I had been waiting for;That so far the Iowa caucauses are like the Caucus race in "Alice In Wonderland":They are all running to stay in the same place, and they all will want a prize.
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I need a gif of that scene from the Simpsons where the teachers are all just dancing in a line singing "Caucus Caucus Caucus" over and over.
 
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