The tour of the draft plans from 2020 caucus states continues this week with Nevada’s draft plan. For 2020, as it has been for the last several cycles, Nevada — along with Iowa — is one of the two caucus states in the “carve-out period” prior to Super Tuesday. Most of the caucus states — other than potentially Washington — are small states which means that, after Super Tuesday, their influence is at the margin with most of the attention going to the large primary states. However, the four carve-out states each have about a week of national attention giving them a significant role in narrowing the field.
In looking at the draft plans for the caucus states, there have been two major issues that the states have had to address in light of changes to Rule 2.K of the DNC Delegate Selection Rules. First, what procedures does the state intend to take to increase participation in the caucuses? Second, how are the votes at the caucuses translated into the allocation of delegates?
As to the first issue, the 2016 plan in Nevada — recognizing that casino and hotel employees in Las Vegas form a significant bloc of potential caucus participants and that the 24-7 nature of that business would mean that some would-be participants would be working during the time set for the precinct caucuses — also scheduled at-large caucuses at a different time from the regular caucuses to allow shift workers to attend a caucus at a time that did not conflict with their job along with tele-caucuses for those in the military. The plan assigned each of the at-large caucuses a number of delegates based on expected participation at that location and two delegates to the tele-caucus.
As to the second issue, in 2016, Nevada allocated its district-level delegates based on the raw vote total from the caucuses (apparently using the initial sign-in preferences). However, the pledged party leader and at-large delegates were allocated based on the preferences of the state convention delegates. The state convention delegates in turn were elected by the county conventions based on preferences at the county conventions (other than the delegates from the tele-caucus), and the delegates at the county conventions were elected by the precinct caucuses (and maybe the at-large caucuses). As noted in previous posts, the rounding rules used to select delegates and non-attendance by elected delegates at the later stages of the process can result in some differences from the initial vote totals. In 2016, the race was close enough that the estimates flipped twice (changing after the county conventions and at the state convention).
The 2020 plan adds several days of no-excuse early votes to the at-large and precinct caucuses. It also transforms the tele-caucus with two virtual caucuses using electronic voting. Individuals who vote early or participate in the virtual caucus will not be eligible to participate in the precinct caucuses (including the at-large caucuses). The early votes and virtual votes will not be released publicly before the regular caucuses but will be available to the chairs at the regular caucuses where they will be added to the votes of the regular caucus attendees. Early voters and virtual caucus attendees will be eligible to stand for election as a county convention delegate.
At the precinct and at-large caucuses, there will be — as in 2016 — two rounds of voting. After the first round of voting, the caucus chairs (taking into account the early and virtual votes) will determine which candidates are viable. Supporters of non-viable candidates will have the opportunity to switch to a viable candidate. For those who voted early or participated in the virtual caucuses, their votes will include a preference list and those votes will be transferred to the highest-ranked viable candidate. The raw vote totals from this second round of voting will be used to allocate delegates — both for choosing delegates to the county conventions and, when combined with the results from other caucuses, to choose delegates to the national convention.
Given the experience in places that actually use preferential votes, I have some concerns about the ability to quickly determine the appropriate preferences of such “absent” voters. However, the plan calls for using the raw vote totals from the second vote — rather than county convention delegates won — to allocate the national convention delegates. Thus, if the vote is close enough to require a recount, any mistakes can be corrected during the recount. However, such mistakes, may still impact the county convention delegates chosen and the plan does not include any provision for fixing that issue.
The use of second votes to allocate delegates raises another issue. At the present time, there are fourteen announced Democratic candidates who are likely to qualify for the first two debates (and a good chance that two or three more might announce and qualify for the debates). While some of these individuals might withdraw in the fall if things are going poorly for them, there is a good chance that ten or more candidates will still be running at the time of the Iowa caucuses. That means that there could be five or six candidates still running at the time of the Nevada caucuses. With five or six candidates running, there is a good possibility that one candidate will get something in the upper teens on the first preference vote. That candidate is also likely to miss viability in some precincts. That could mean that a candidate with 15% on the first preference vote would get less than 15% on the second preference vote.
One additional question is an ambiguity in the rules. The size of the precinct (and past voting history) determines the number of delegates that each precinct gets to its county convention. In turn, that number determines the “viability” threshold in the precinct. While normally, fifteen percent is the viability threshold, different rules apply in precincts that elect three or fewer delegates. For example, in two-delegate districts, the threshold is 25%. However, it is theoretically possible that more candidates will have enough votes to qualify for delegates than there are delegates to be elected. Thus, it is possible to be viable and still not win delegates. Whether the supporters of those third-placed and fourth-placed candidates will get to realign after the first vote will impact the state-wide count. (The plain reading of the rules suggest that they will not.) Given the relatively small size of these precincts, it should not impact the state-wide numbers. However, there could be a large number of these precincts in Nevada’s Second District and Fourth District which might impact the allocation of the district-level delegates.
As noted above, the national rules are designed to promote two goals. First, the national rules want to increase participation in the caucus states. The use of early voting should result in more people voting in 2020 than in the last cycle (along with the fact that the Republican primary will be significantly less of a contest than in 2016). Second, the national party wants to prevent battles over delegates in the later stages of the state processes (on the theory that such battles increases ill will and makes it harder to unify the party). The rules in Nevada do address this concern (although somewhat increasing the likelihood that one of the candidates will want to closely look at the vote counting in the immediate aftermath of the caucuses). Of course, delegate selection is not the only thing that the supporters of competing candidates can battle over in the latter stages of a drawn out primary. (I remember in my state, in 2016, there was a big battle over the election of DNC members which turned on which campaign got more of their supporters to actually attend the state convention.)
By the time that the candidates get to Nevada, the field will be narrow enough that candidates will probably need to win delegates to continue to South Carolina and Super Tuesday. Of course, by that time, early voting will have started in some of the Super Tuesday states. The use of second-preference votes (similar to but different than Iowa’s use of state-convention delegate equivalents) to determine which candidates win delegates will undoubtedly understate the support for some of the candidates in the back of the pack. How that might impact the race coming out of Nevada remains to be seen.
