Colby Cosh discusses some of those puzzling-to-Canadians electoral oddities of our southern neighbours:
The actual, real, honest-to-God voting part of the U.S. presidential nominating process will begin with the Iowa state precinct caucuses on Feb. 3, two weeks from Monday. Every four years, at around this time, I rediscover the astonishing opacity of this process and marvel anew. The Iowa caucuses themselves, which have been the paramount preoccupation of American politics for months, serve as an excellent example.
You may have seen C-SPAN footage of the weird precinct caucus goings-on. These incorporate no balloting. Instead, you see small roomfuls of enthusiasts forming physical groupings, chatting about who they ought to support, and then merging smaller “non-viable” groups until the number of groups matches the number of delegates to be sent further on in the process.
“Further on to where?”, you may ask. To the Iowa Democratic Party county conventions, silly; but those don’t happen until March 21. These conventions send delegates to the party conventions for each congressional district (on the morning of April 25), and also to the state convention (June 13).
The actual makeup of the Iowa delegation to the national convention isn’t fully decided until that last date — yet an estimate of the statewide “result” will be provided magically on the evening of the 3rd. Even if no candidate drops out before the district and state conventions, this guess isn’t exactly set in stone. If there are dropouts, the final Iowa vote in the national roll call may look nothing at all like the estimates from the evening. Yet it’s these semi-fictitious, inferential estimates that will actually influence the course of the race in the other 49 states (and in the non-state delegations).
From a Canadian standpoint it all seems like a hell of a way to run a country.
