#caucus2020

I'm Bernie or bust, so we walked in and immediately sat down at the Sanders table. The caucus started and they asked each table if they wanted to send forth someone to speak on behalf of their candidate. When they got to our table, everyone turned towards me and Kaitlin urged me to get up. But I was too afraid. As I sat there though, listening to the next person speak with my head increasingly pounding, I realized that I had to. If no one else could, I should. It came to the last candidate to speak and no one from the Steyer table wanted to give a speech either.

And at that moment, I jumped up and stopped the proceedings to give my few words. It was the most terrifying thing I've done (which is no small feat). Yet, with my heart jumping out of my mouth, I told my story. In 2016, I caucased for Bernie Sanders for the same reason I was there tonight, he's been fighting for ALL of us for his entire life (like that photo of him laughing while being dragged by cops for protesting segregation). And when Hilary won the Democratic nomination, I wrote in Bernie for President in the general election. Because my principles couldn't allow me to vote for either people in good conscience (and because I was naive enough to believe Trump couldn't do that much harm). Which is why I was there deciding to speak in front of all of them tonight. If he can fight for us, I can do it too. I even inspired Ralph Saunders from the Steyer table to speak up too after I had finished. And in turn, he inspired me with his efforts. Stand and deliver.

So it came time for the 1st viability round and our Sanders table only had 11 people when we needed 12. But none of us could bring ourselves to go over and solicit others to join us. It seemed it wasn't in any of our personalities (for me it's a matter of talking to people. Despite what you might think, I'm crippling autistic and it's one of the hardest things in the world for me. So to go over and try to sway someone is waaaaaay outside my wheelhouse. The speech was hard enough.) And as I watched the other Bernie folks spread off to other candidates and had people from the other candidates come over to talk to me, I knew what I had to do.

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant is faithful, 100%"

I planted myself like a flag of solidarity and laughed to myself as even Kaitlin changed candidates (she's an American too. We don't have to vote the same 😉). It was even funnier seeing that Ralph had done the same too. We both sat their with our principles and beliefs, standing solid in the face of peer pressure and adversity. And by George, it felt like the most American thing I've ever done. I even give props to Heather Ann Moore on the Warren side for understanding what I was doing and choosing not to sell me on anything. Also, a huge high five to the Joe Biden speaker who came over just to tell me how cool he thought it was that I decided to get up and speak without knowing what to do.

Not to mention that I got to do the coin toss for the extra delegate at the end because of my chaotic neutrality. Though I did drop it on the first try. But hey, at least it made everyone laugh.

Now though, as I sit here and see the numbers come in from all over the state, I smile. There's a part of me that knows that Bernie Sanders will take Iowa tonight. And if he does, every single person in that gym is going to think back at what we did. They'll remember Ralph and I, sitting there alone, scared yet strong and saying something anyway. Even when we had no words to say it. As I sat there, smiling at Ralph alone at his table too across the room, I felt like we were the most powerful Americans in the country. I can't wait for everyone else from that gymnasium tonight to realize it too. All it takes is one person to start change in this world.

And they say democracy is dead.

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This past Monday, across the nation, political junkies like myself sat down in front of our TVs and eagerly awaited the results of the 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses. While technically the official “beginning” of the primary process, February 3rd marked the end of a long jockeying phase filled with televised debates and coalition-building. The electoral picture coming into Iowa was a little bit more muddled than it usually is by this time of year: two candidates were considered strong national front-runners, Former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders. Senator Elizabeth Warren was running slightly behind the pair, and Pete Buttigieg, the former Mayor of South Bend, sat in a more-or-less distant fourth. All four had a chance to win, depending on which poll you looked at. The results of the Iowa caucuses would serve as a strong indicator of where these candidates really stood, and would clarify the path each needed to take in order to win the nomination. 

So Monday night came. And went. And no results came.

What is a caucus? Well, they’re one way for members of a political party to have a say in who gets the official nomination of their party. The other method is called a “primary”. Primaries are simple. You show up to your local polling place, wait in line, and vote at a machine for your preferred candidate. At the end of the day, the votes are counted up. Each state has a predetermined number of delegates that it can give a candidate. At each party’s national convention in July, the candidate who has the majority of their party’s delegates gets the nomination. If a state is winner-take-all, the winner of their primary gets all of that state’s delegates. If a state uses proportional allocation, then candidates get a portion of the state’s delegates equal to the share of votes they got. And that’s it. Easy!

I have to describe how primaries work in order to emphasize to you how much more complicated caucuses are. Specifically, Iowa’s caucuses. Instead of going and voting at a polling place at any point during the day, to caucus you must go to your polling place at a predetermined time; in Iowa’s case, 7 PM Central Standard Time. At 7 PM, the doors of the polling place are locked to further entrants, and the real fun begins. Different areas of the room are designated for different candidates, and each person goes and stands in the area of their preferred candidate with their candidate’s other supporters. 

The precinct captain for each candidate, designated by the campaign, counts up the number of supporters in their group, and reports that number. This number is crucial. If a candidate’s group does not have at least 15% of the total people in the room after the first count, their candidate is deemed non-viable in that precinct. Supporters of non-viable candidates must either move to another candidate, or leave the caucus. An energetic phase of electioneering follows, where supporters of viable candidates may try to convince non-viable candidates’ supporters to come and join their group. One non-viable group might even merge with another, giving a previously non-viable candidate a chance. A lot can happen. After this realignment period is over, the precinct captains report their group size again. Each precinct has a given number of state delegate equivalents (SDEs) that it can give. These SDEs are given to each candidate based on the size of their final group of supporters. There are 2,107 SDEs up for grabs in the caucus, which are used to determine how many of Iowa’s 41 state delegates each candidate receives.

In the past, the Iowa Democratic Party has only reported how many SDEs each candidate received. In 2016, Bernie Sanders lost the SDE race by a margin of 0.2%, and there was a strong push by elements of the Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) to change the reporting system to more accurately reflect the outcome of the caucuses. Starting this year, the rules were changed so that not only would SDEs be reported, but also raw voting numbers from the first initial round and the final post-realignment round. This is a lot more data to deal with. A lot more. So the IDP came up with the bright idea to use an app for vote reporting instead of the typical method of calling them in via phone.

On Monday night, as election officials at caucusing locations went to report vote totals, they found that the app they’d been given didn’t work. It took a little while for outside observers to notice, but by the time two or three hours had passed and 0% of precincts had yet to report their results, it was obvious there was a problem. Reports started trickling in of precinct captains complaining on social media about the app’s failure, and that one in particular had been on hold with the Iowa Democratic Party for over an hour as he tried to report his data via phone. 

The combination of a non-functional app and clogged phone lines meant that information was coming in at a trickle. To make matters worse, the IDP released a statement saying that the vote totals they did have showed vague “inconsistencies”. Many were quick to blame the caucuses’ convoluted rules, which likely led to mistakes in the vote tallying and SDE calculation processes. These inconsistencies in the vote tallies meant that the IDP needed to go back and recount the caucus results by hand, which is ridiculously time-consuming. The first batch of results wasn’t officially posted until 5PM Eastern Time on the day after the caucuses. Even now, over 40 hours later, only 71% of the votes have been counted. No timetable has been given for when the rest might be finished.