Caucuses Should Be Abolished
I’ve Thought So Since I Participated In One In 1984
By Martin Zabell
I spent several hours on Monday night checking whether there were any results for the Iowa Democratic Party caucus. When I woke up, there were still no results.
I couldn’t be happier.
As a news addict, I need to know the results of elections more than I need food, particularly during a time when the future of American democracy and the USA itself is in grave peril because of the president’s pro-dictator beliefs. I should have been upset this morning because the lack of results could bolster the anti-Democratic Party arguments of someone whose name I can’t type.
But I couldn’t be happier.
I’m elated because what happened on Feb. 3, 2020, might precipitate the end of a political tradition that I’ve thought since 1984 should be abolished.
In 1984, I was a sportswriter who wanted to be a news reporter. I had worked on Capitol Hill as an intern while in college, had interned for a foreign policy think tank, and had a degree in Government and Law. As an independent progressive. I wanted Gary Hart to be the next president -- and still think the USA would have been better off if he had been elected (he was omniscient about a terrorist attack while the co-leader of a national commission on national security).
On March 24, 1984, I went to a Democratic Party presidential caucus in Arlington, Va, to vote for Hart. My recollection is that I got there in the morning. I am 100 percent positive that I left in the evening. After spending too much time trying to figure out how the process worked, I informed the right person that I wanted to vote for Hart. I was sent to a classroom with about 40 people. All supported Hart.
The voters learned via loudspeakers that they would lose their vote if they left a classroom. The process was unbelievably opaque. I inferred from the roughly hourly announcements that the leaders of the local Hart, Walter Mondale, and Jesse Jackson campaigns were negotiating with each other.
There was no discussion of politics in my room. We just waited for HOURS. Luckily, there was a television. Virginia was playing in the second game of an NCAA men’s basketball championships doubleheader. Both games were for a spot in the Final Four. At some point, someone turned on the TV and for four HOURS six or seven of us watched the games while everyone else acted like potted plants.
With a few minutes left in the Virginia-Indiana East Regional Final, an announcement said that everyone had to go to the school auditorium within five minutes or else their votes didn’t count. I was infuriated -- but I didn’t move. I thought ‘how can these idiots have such contempt for democracy that they force us to sit in a room for five hours and then tell us our vote won’t count unless we behave like trained seals?’
The other basketball fans left. I was alone. As the game ended, with Virginia winning 50-48, an announcement said the auditorium doors were going to close in 30 seconds. I raced down the hall as a security guard began closing the door. I was late, but barged through him and into the auditorium. Thus, I wasted another two hours, sitting with hundreds of people while listening to a few pro-Hart, Mondale, and Jackson speeches. Then, there was silence.
Eventually, we were told that Hart won the Arlington caucus. It was pitch black when I left the caucus. Luckily, I had no obligations. How many caucus goers lose their vote because they do?
The next day, I learned Jackson won the state caucus. I just looked it up to see if my recollection was correct. The report I read today said Jackson won the “first caucuses in Mississippi and Virginia” but Mondale won in “later stages.” This result isn’t much different than the results of recent Iowa caucuses. In 2012, Mitt Romney was declared the winner of the GOP caucus but weeks later it was deduced that Rick Santorum won. (It’s remarkably easy to find the result of the game; several sources about the 1984 presidential race have no results for the Virginia caucus, probably because they couldn’t figure it out).
For the past 36 years, I have been angered whenever I heard someone talk about how the Iowa caucus represented the virtues of American democracy and it should continue to have a disproportionate influence in who became the next American president. In fact, the Iowa caucus -- and every other caucus -- is an opaque and unfair way of giving a small number of citizens more input in American democracy than their neighbors.
I hope the Feb. 3 fiasco in Iowa ends the practice of making one caucus so important and expedites the end of all caucuses.
Martin Zabell was a newspaper reporter and editor and a free-lance writer for about 30 years. He currently is a resident of New York City.
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