Most voters in most states (heck even most voters in Iowa) have never experienced anything like the Iowa Caucuses.  For most people, voting is going down to your local precinct (or maybe putting a ballot in the mail).  You get a ballot from the election judge, fill it out in the privacy of a “booth,” and then drop it in the ballot box.  (Or maybe, you use a touchscreen terminal in your precinct.)  In any case, unless you have a long wait in line to get your ballot, you can be in and out of the precinct in less than fifteen minutes.

In Iowa, especially on the Democratic side, the precinct caucus is a meeting.  After some introductory comments and business (like electing the chair and secretary of the caucus), the local representative of each candidate will get a chance to make a speech.  The attendees will then divide into preference groups.  After the initial division, a count is done of each preference group and the chair calculates which groups are “viable” (i.e. have a high enough percent to qualify for delegates to the county convention).  At that point, there is a chance to realign.  After the realignment, there is a second count.  The actual allocation of delegates is based on the second count.

In the past, the first vote was a test vote.  Regardless of whether your candidate had enough votes to win delegates or not, you were free to change your mind before the second vote.  And this opportunity to change your vote gave the opportunity for strategic voting.  For example, imagine that your precinct gets 5 delegates and there are 101 attendees.  In the first round, 5 candidates get votes — candidate A got 31 votes, candidate B got 25 votes, candidate C got 20, candidate D got 14, and candidate E got 11.  Under the pre-2020 rules, the supporters of the top three candidate had a choice, some of them could defect to candidate D or candidate E to help those candidates get to 16 attendees so that they to would get a delegate.  Alternatively, they could make promises to those supporters (perhaps guaranteeing that if their candidate got a second or third delegate they would give that additional delegate to the supporters of the failed candidate).  What deal was given might depend on which candidates were not viable and who was leading.  If you were a supporter of candidate B and you thought that — if forced — the supporters of candidates D and E would support candidate A, you might be willing to send seven attendees to those two candidates so that everybody got 1 delegate from the precinct (effectively counting as a tied precinct toward the state numbers) rather than candidate A winning 3-1-1.  On the other hand, if you think that they would naturally support candidate B, you might offer the delegate slot knowing that it would get you a 2-2-1 split (losing nothing to candidate A and beating candidate C). Continue Reading...