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The caucuses are not normal elections: there are no ballots. The results are literally counting where people in a room are standing and recording that on a spre

The caucuses are not normal elections: there are no ballots. The results are literally counting where people in a room are standing and recording that on a spreadsheet. The problem has been relaying that spreadsheet to the party.

Loughla 7y ago
It feels like a caucus exists to arbitrarily filter out participants based on how long they take. Not everyone has the 2-3 hours to spend on a caucus vote. Why don't they just vote via paper ballot?
- dont__panic 7y ago
  In this specific case? Because Iowa wanted to be the first contest in the nomination process, but NH legally gets to run the first primary. Caucusing is an older alternative to voting that served as a loophole to allow Iowa to go first.
- finnthehuman 7y ago
  >Why don't they just vote via paper ballot? Because Iowa chose to have a caucus, not a primary. If you’re not an Iowa voter, there are a million political bikesheds that would have more relevance to your life. You’re basically just complaining about the pace of a television program.
- couchand 7y ago
  It's worth noting that the caucus is supposed to be much more than just registering your presidential preference. The idea is that you have a regular gathering with your neighbors to discuss political concerns. That most people view it as an elaborate and slow version of a primary is an indictment of how sad the state of political participation in our country is. That being said, it is an excellent way to exclude people who have other responsibilities or difficulty making it out for several hours on a week night.
  - 333c 7y ago
    It sounds like it's good at excluding a number of participants: those with physical disabilities, parents of young children, minimum wage workers who can't get time off, on-duty medical and emergency personnel, etc.
    - couchand 7y ago
      As a point of interest, those last groups are theoretically covered. I've heard of a concept of workplace caucus groups, where voters who can't get away (like medical staff) can be counted with others on the same shift. I have no idea how prevalent that is, and right now I can't find any relevant documentation either, so maybe it's not really a thing?
- filoeleven 7y ago
  One of the changes this year was that if your candidate made it through the first round of voting, you could go home. So that should have helped the situation somewhat, but I wonder if it contributed to the inconsistencies. At least there’s a paper trail this year too.
WindyCityBrew 7y ago
Minus the google being evil part, this entire operation could have been done in google sheets and would probably have gone 100 x better. With free robust revision history, permission control, and everything....
- judge2020 7y ago
  Assuming they set it up properly and/or use multiple sheets, a single sheet for 20+ people can get real messy and hard to audit.
  - willj 7y ago
    They probably mean via a Google Form. That’s a fairly safe way (in my experience) to add inputs from many users concurrently.
    - rtkwe 7y ago
      Then you get into problems dealing with erroneous entries though right?
  - WindyCityBrew 7y ago
    I would set up each reporting unit (precint/causaus site) with their own sheet. There are probably only 5-10 officials per site that should even have edit access, maybe less, like only secretaries? Make a nice formatted layout specific to that year. People feel pretty comfortable in excel-like spreadsheets/forms. Then at the state level, since you have permission to all the sheets, its simple to aggregates all the sheet data It's not some wiz-bang branded app with fancy animations, but its piggybacking on a very robust spreadsheet system that many people have some experience/intuition with.
- boublepop 7y ago
  This kind of naivety is likely what brought about the entire issue in the first place.
  - 7y ago
filoeleven 7y ago
This year, caucus participants also have cards on which they write down which candidate they supported in each round. So there’s a verifiable trail beyond the head counts. Early reports on the radio mentioned that people trying to call in and relay the results were waiting ages on hold, but they also said that the reason phones were so heavily used was that the app was giving inconsistent results. I never heard any more about what that could mean exactly.
- lawnchair_larry 7y ago
  From what I heard, it means that the volunteer captains are old people who don’t know how to download apps, and they preferred dialing a phone number.
  - Lendal 7y ago
    Many of the people didn't know they were going to be required to have a certain app, and that's why they didn't download it beforehand. They were then told to rely on the phone call-in method, which failed. Many of the caucus sites don't have good enough cell reception to download an app at the last minute. Imagine yourself arriving at a location with poor cell reception, told to download someone else's unknown code onto your personal phone using a weak or nonexistent cellular data signal. Problematic to say the least. Finally, the next day the Internet calls you "old people" as a final slap in the face.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  The Iowa Democratic Party was quite clear that their explanation was that the numbers being reported through the app were inconsistent; the reason there are three sets of numbers (first alignment, second alignment, and state delegate equivalent) reported from each precinct and then aggregated this year is that multiple candidates in the last cycle complained about apparent inconsistencies in the final results vs. there internal tallies (because voting is not private in caucuses, campaign precinct captains tend to report out results to the campaigns), and the DNC imposed transparency requirements to provide confidence in the final results.

Loughla 7y ago

It feels like a caucus exists to arbitrarily filter out participants based on how long they take. Not everyone has the 2-3 hours to spend on a caucus vote. Why don't they just vote via paper ballot?

dont__panic 7y ago
In this specific case? Because Iowa wanted to be the first contest in the nomination process, but NH legally gets to run the first primary. Caucusing is an older alternative to voting that served as a loophole to allow Iowa to go first.
finnthehuman 7y ago
>Why don't they just vote via paper ballot? Because Iowa chose to have a caucus, not a primary. If you’re not an Iowa voter, there are a million political bikesheds that would have more relevance to your life. You’re basically just complaining about the pace of a television program.
couchand 7y ago
It's worth noting that the caucus is supposed to be much more than just registering your presidential preference. The idea is that you have a regular gathering with your neighbors to discuss political concerns. That most people view it as an elaborate and slow version of a primary is an indictment of how sad the state of political participation in our country is. That being said, it is an excellent way to exclude people who have other responsibilities or difficulty making it out for several hours on a week night.
- 333c 7y ago
  It sounds like it's good at excluding a number of participants: those with physical disabilities, parents of young children, minimum wage workers who can't get time off, on-duty medical and emergency personnel, etc.
  - couchand 7y ago
    As a point of interest, those last groups are theoretically covered. I've heard of a concept of workplace caucus groups, where voters who can't get away (like medical staff) can be counted with others on the same shift. I have no idea how prevalent that is, and right now I can't find any relevant documentation either, so maybe it's not really a thing?
filoeleven 7y ago
One of the changes this year was that if your candidate made it through the first round of voting, you could go home. So that should have helped the situation somewhat, but I wonder if it contributed to the inconsistencies. At least there’s a paper trail this year too.

WindyCityBrew 7y ago

Minus the google being evil part, this entire operation could have been done in google sheets and would probably have gone 100 x better. With free robust revision history, permission control, and everything....

judge2020 7y ago
Assuming they set it up properly and/or use multiple sheets, a single sheet for 20+ people can get real messy and hard to audit.
- willj 7y ago
  They probably mean via a Google Form. That’s a fairly safe way (in my experience) to add inputs from many users concurrently.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    Then you get into problems dealing with erroneous entries though right?
- WindyCityBrew 7y ago
  I would set up each reporting unit (precint/causaus site) with their own sheet. There are probably only 5-10 officials per site that should even have edit access, maybe less, like only secretaries? Make a nice formatted layout specific to that year. People feel pretty comfortable in excel-like spreadsheets/forms. Then at the state level, since you have permission to all the sheets, its simple to aggregates all the sheet data It's not some wiz-bang branded app with fancy animations, but its piggybacking on a very robust spreadsheet system that many people have some experience/intuition with.
boublepop 7y ago
This kind of naivety is likely what brought about the entire issue in the first place.
- 7y ago

filoeleven 7y ago

This year, caucus participants also have cards on which they write down which candidate they supported in each round. So there’s a verifiable trail beyond the head counts. Early reports on the radio mentioned that people trying to call in and relay the results were waiting ages on hold, but they also said that the reason phones were so heavily used was that the app was giving inconsistent results. I never heard any more about what that could mean exactly.

lawnchair_larry 7y ago
From what I heard, it means that the volunteer captains are old people who don’t know how to download apps, and they preferred dialing a phone number.
- Lendal 7y ago
  Many of the people didn't know they were going to be required to have a certain app, and that's why they didn't download it beforehand. They were then told to rely on the phone call-in method, which failed. Many of the caucus sites don't have good enough cell reception to download an app at the last minute. Imagine yourself arriving at a location with poor cell reception, told to download someone else's unknown code onto your personal phone using a weak or nonexistent cellular data signal. Problematic to say the least. Finally, the next day the Internet calls you "old people" as a final slap in the face.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
dragonwriter 7y ago
The Iowa Democratic Party was quite clear that their explanation was that the numbers being reported through the app were inconsistent; the reason there are three sets of numbers (first alignment, second alignment, and state delegate equivalent) reported from each precinct and then aggregated this year is that multiple candidates in the last cycle complained about apparent inconsistencies in the final results vs. there internal tallies (because voting is not private in caucuses, campaign precinct captains tend to report out results to the campaigns), and the DNC imposed transparency requirements to provide confidence in the final results.