Part one of Nevada’s convoluted process of selecting its 25 delegates to the national convention had its problems, if you remember. Part two was even worse yesterday.
An estimated 10,000 people showed up at Bally’s Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas for Clark County Convention, the largest of the 17 county meetings held Saturday, according to casino staff. That’s roughly 2,000 more than party officials expected.
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Rowdy crowds quickly filled the Las Vegas ballroom to capacity and forced casino staff to close the doors early, leaving hundreds of delegates outside, party leaders said.
Given that 72% of the state convention delegation comes from Clark County, this is no small potatoes.
The confusion left the results of any Saturday voting vulnerable to a court challenge.
Ya think?
Of course, the DNC is all over this.
Vassiliadis said the Democratic National Committee has threatened to reduce Nevada’s delegation to the national convention if the matter is not resolved.
Of course, this would lead to charges of disenfranchisement.
The Nevada Democratic Party has appointed a committee to review the entire caucus process.
Yeah, get on that, would you?
Let’s just hope this gets ironed out and that the review committee simplifies the whole process for 2012.
In fairness, all this happened because the county conventions are usually the mere ratification of the front-runner’s victory. Nevada has never held their county conventions while the nomination is still up in the air. One would have hoped they’d realize that nearly all the delegates would show, rather than the typical 70% or so. But from the beginning, the Nevada Democratic Party has not been ready to accept this prominence thrust on them.
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p>Perhaps in four years the Western primary could be in Arizona or Colorado. I think this also informs as why Senator John Ensign cruises to victory every 6 years, and why Nevada goes GOP in presidential elections.
that aside from huck arguing with mccain over the vote in..was it WA? the republicans seem to have less infrastructure issues than the dems.
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p>Why? Aren’t essentially doing the same thing?
Pretty straightforward.
instead of a primary vote like we did?
IMHO, though, caucuses should be banned. They are grotesquely undemocratic.
some caucuses are the same as primaries but are called caucuses because they are run by the parties rather than by the state govt.
The defect in this case is that party officials were unprepared to conduct a caucus of so many people. Unprepared, in effect, for a hotly-contested race.
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p>Now you don’t like caucuses for other reasons, but that’s a separate criticism. Apropos of that, I wonder if there is any room for a deliberative process in the nomination process? Which is the excuse for caucuses.
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p>Maybe not, especially given high turnouts, which tend to leach deliberation out of any process. (I’m thinking of the Middleborough mega-Town Meeting, for instance.)
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p>However, by some metrics primaries are also “grotesquely undemocratic.” In both cases, Winston Churchill’s maxim comes to mind.
A primary is organized under the aegis of the state government. Caucuses are organized by the party. As David says, some de facto primaries are officially “caucuses” because the state doesn’t put any money toward them.
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p>Most of the time, a caucus is organized in a state where the parties only have money for a more limited event. I think that if money weren’t an issue, we’d see many more primaries (excepting Iowa, which confuses “outmoded and undemocratic” with “quaint and traditional”.)
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p>Could use the same definition for NE style Town Meetings.
Wasn’t anything quaint or traditional about our casino town meeting last summer in M’boro…
We also select our actual delegates at caucuses on April 5th, but the math has already been done for us. Clinton and Obama supporters caucus separately in each CD and elect different numbers of delegates based on primary outcome. Seems it would be very easy for Nevada to do the same.
I think primary day should be on saturday or sunday (or both) instead of tuesday.