One thing that has presented itself during the primary and the discussion of delegates is the talk of disenfranchised voters and closed primary rules. I think this is important and that we as Democrats should push to provide voters better access to voting. But when you really looking into the primary process it becomes evident that caucuses are the real culprit in suppressing votes. In fact caucuses are more effective in voter suppression than Voter ID laws being passed by Republicans. Vox post an interesting article that shows the bottom 11 states in percentage of voter turnout were caucus states. Washington 4.5% turnout, Wyoming 1.6% turnout. Green are the caucus states.
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image via Vox
But these are our rules so candidates should be able to freely attack states and delegates within the rules. So while I think we should fight for Democrats to have better voting access and that we have an issue, I won’t fault candidates for follow our rules. But what I do have an issue with is when a candidate who has based their campaign on states with rampant voter suppression rules to attack voter suppression. Recently Bernie Sanders complained by the closed primary process and voters who were not able to vote. I don’t recall Sanders complaining all that much about the embarrassment of Washington having a 4.5% representation. Politfact rated Sanders statement as Mostly False when Sanders said:
We win when voter turnout is high, we lose when it is low
It is exactly the opposite, Sanders benefited by voter suppression, where those with families, single parents or who were not able to dedicate hours of their time to work could not represent themselves. Politico noted:
Sanders also won the contests with the 10 lowest turnouts, all caucuses: Alaska, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Kansas, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, Washington state and Wyoming.
So if the revolution includes voter suppression, then try another party, we should fight for voting rights as a party.
is really dumb.
as many other outlets have posted and fact checkers as well. I’m really interested in your thoughts. Thanks.
Your post is a lame attack about a candidate supporting voter suppression.
It is actually quite an interesting post, I’d say. Caucus are less democratic than closed primaries, which are in turn less democratic than open primaries.
It would have been nice if that was the premise of the post, though. It wasn’t.
How do caucuses suppress turnout? Of course they have lower turnout, they’re closed party elections. But lower turnout doesn’t necessarily equal suppression.
since it makes it sound intentional, but I think you know perfectly well why caucuses result in lower turnout: because you have to commit to being at the caucus location for at a specific time and typically for a prolonged period of time. Even if the caucus is held on a weekend there are many, many people who don’t have time for that. People have jobs, kids to take care of, and household chores to take care of. Even for people that have the time, many people really just want to vote privately and don’t want to have to publicly confront their neighbors about their voting preferences. The fact is that closed party primaries in general have much higher turnout than caucuses.
I have no problem with Sanders playing the delegate game, but complaining loudly about closed primaries that you lost while remaining silent about closed caucuses that you won just makes you look like a sore loser, not a person of firm principle.
In any case,I don’t think there is much question that low turnout is much more likely to lead to a result that does not represent the will of the party electorate. Whether it is an open or closed system, you really want as many eligible voters as possible to participate.
In a primary, you can take a few minutes in the morning to vote or during lunch, etc. A barrier is create when the requirement is that a person needs to dedicate hours of time in order to vote. If you create barriers it’s voter suppression and it’s evident by the numbers.
A closed primary is a little different, only registered Democrats are allowed to vote, like in MA where we had just under 40% turnout. With a caucus, you are not just entering a voting area to vote. read this from Tacoma. Waiting 12 hours, losing your ability to vote because you ran out of diapers is not right. It’s a barrier to vote.
I think we as a party, if we look towards providing access to voters during a primary, we need to take a hard look at the caucus process. because right now, in many states we are left with fanatics and not voters who are left to determine delegate and the will of the people.
What’s the problem? A caucus is a caucus, and thus it has been for as long as I can remember. They’re different from primaries and serve a different purpose.
All good. Are you saying we should eliminate caucuses? If so how would we select delegates?
…though we would still need caucuses to elect actual delegates. MA is semi-closed, BTW, as unenrolleds can vote, which I actually wish were not the case. Turnout percentages should be measured as proportion to eligible voters. As a fraction, if unenrolleds aren’t allowed to be in the numerator, they should not be counted in the denominator.
You do realize we are talking about states that do not have primaries at all, right? The issue is less how each actual delegate is selected than in how you determine how many are bound to each candidate.
The post itself doesn’t make that clear.
To relitigate an argument made four weeks ago by a campaign that can’t win the Demcratic nomination? Your candidate won johnk, fair and square, give the attacks on Sanders a rest. The more interesting question is how we can all work to defeat Trump and what this sure to be nasty, brutish and long election will do to our divided republic.
Your point is certainly correct if the only purpose of discussion here is to channel The Force against The Dark Side for specific elections. But broad-based philosophical discussions in the context of recent events is very interesting and deserves space here too. Replacing caucuses with primaries is part of the unfinished business of making this a more democratic society and improving the representativeness of our system of government.
It sounds like you agreed with that in your above comment. I am even coming around to other reforms like IRV, and maybe your past proposal to just let people who get the signatures get on the primary ballot rather than having conventions and caucuses. I think anything makes it easier for more people to participate in the process should be on the table.
Do you see the counterargument? I find it every bit as compelling.
Washi ng ton votes by mail, so, that could be bad for turnout. Is that number people mailing in ballots, or those participating in non-mail voting?
Sanders has been in favor of easier voting and against voter suppression his entire career. Trying to insinuate otherwise is wrong. Here are some other factors that explain things better.
Sanders may have won the caucus states because people got a chance to listen to someone from each campaign talk about what they stood for before voting. This could show that voters with good information about each candidate tended to vote for Sanders.
If you look at the results by when people voted, you’ll see early voters and absentee voters tended towards Clinton, while voters on election day tended towards Sanders. Again this could mean that as voters learned more about Sanders, they tended to vote for Sanders.
States with extremely difficult rules, such as New York which required people to register as Democrats 6 months before the primary, are clearly voter suppression. These rules tend to make it more difficult for insurgent candidates.