After viewing the Iowa caucus results (yay Fred!) I read an article about how the different parties do their caucus voting. For the stupid party (republicans) it's simple: one person, one vote, ballot in the box, tally votes by hand. Pretty straightforward and efficient. About what I would expect from a party that claims to not want big government bureaucracies.
On the other (left) hand, we have this process:
There are 1,784 precincts. The precinct caucuses begin at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday 3 January; attendees may register until 7 p.m. After everyone has had a say, attendees gather in like-minded groups, including undecideds. (like minded undecideds? If you've not decided, how can you be of a like mind? Maybe one undecided isn't sure because he bases decisions on gender and ethnicity, while another is undecided because hey base their vote on which candidate has the worst foreign policy...)
To be viable, a candidate must have a minimum level of support of 15-25% of the participants (varies based on number of delegates assigned to the precinct). (They do this by having the groups form in different corners of the room. Not sure what they do for when they have more than four candidates.) After the first "round," supporters of candidates with less than the required percentage may join another group. (And they are encouraged to do so by members of the "successful" groups. So much for individuality--if your candidate isn't the most popular, just go with the herd (or flock, as the case may be.) Good ol' groupthink.) Delegates pledge support to a specific candidate and are selected from the candidate supporters at the caucus. Iowa has 57 Democratic National Convention delegates. (Who absolutely promise to vote the way the folks in the corner told them to.)
This illustrates (again) how the evil party can't do anything without a huge bureaucracy, and always places individual desires beneath the desires of the collective.
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