Hello! I have a quick anecdote to share and consider from caucus night at my precinct in Iowa. I think its absurd to apply the extremely arbitrary 15% viability cutoff at the level of each individual caucus site, as it introduces incredible volatility into the system. I was there to support Bernie but this is NOT a pro-candidate statement, it’s a statement about the ridiculousness of this antiquated and anti-democratic process, and I’m glad to hear many people are in favor of ending it.
On caucus night, a small gymnasium was packed with 306 voters there to decide the allocation of 8 delegates. The 15% cutoff means you needed 46 votes to be viable, less than that and you get no delegates and your supporters can realign. Here’s how the numbers shook out in the first round:
Sanders 89
Warren 65
Biden 47
Buttigieg 46
Klobuchar 35
Yang 13
Steyer 9
Gabbard 1
Uncommitted 1
As you can see, Buttigieg and Biden were just barely over the viability number. After realignment, the top four candidates ended up as such:
Sanders 95
Warren 80
Biden 61
Buttigieg 59
Using the rounding equation (8 delegates x # for candidate/# total at start, then round), this means that each candidate ended up getting 2 delegates.
Sanders 2
Warren 2
Biden 2
Buttigieg 2
Fine. Here’s where the absurdity enters. If a single Buttigieg voter had decided not to come caucus, they would have been a single vote short of viability, and team Buttigieg would have gotten zero delegates. Then the caucus math would have worked out as such:
Sanders 3
Warren 3
Biden 2
Buttigieg 0
Therefore, a SINGLE voter made the difference for Buttigieg winning an extra 2 delegates, and Sanders/Warren losing 1 delegate. This means one voter yielded a 3 delegate swing towards Buttigieg. Conversely, had a single extra Bernie supporter made it out to caucus, Bernie would have picked up one delegate to Buttigieg’s loss, and so that voter’s vote would have yielded a 2 delegate swing to Bernie. Therefore a single vote change can have immensely disproportionate impact at the individual caucus level.
This analysis shows that a 15% viability cutoff, an extremely arbitrary number, has major ramifications at the individual caucus level. Had the cutoff been 15.361%, an equally arbitrary number, Buttigieg would have gotten zero delegates despite having the same 46 people there, denying those voters their democratic voice. If the cutoff were 15.691%, Biden would have lost his viability as well and there would have been a Sanders/Warren 4/4 shutout, which also would have been terribly unrepresentative of the people who actually came out to vote.
I don’t think any of these outcomes are reasonable or democratic. A simple statewide primary, where the final vote totals round out to a delegate count, is far more representative of the will of voters than this highly volatile caucus system. While the caucus in theory allows supporters of less-popular candidates to realign and have some influence in the final results, a ranked-choice voting scheme accomplishes the same goals and would be far more accessible to the many voters who were unable to attend the caucus. While a rounding equation would still be needed to assign delegates, rounding after aggregating the total votes means that the combined actions of a single voter in each precinct can impact only a few delegates in the total, and not possibly hundreds of delegates as is the current case.
My anecdote might seem like an exceptional case, but just from chatting to people from other precincts in my area, I have heard many stories already of Bernie or Joe or Pete or Liz being a single vote short of viability in their precinct, despite them all being competitive at the statewide level. With 86% reporting, it looks like this volatility across 1700 caucus sites is going to result in Buttigieg, Biden and Sanders getting more delegates than their initial vote share, with Warren and Klobuchar losing out on delegates that I think they deserve.
Final point, I hope this reporting debacle provides enough motivation to end the caucuses forever.