Fictional Accuracy Of Elections And The Iowa Caucus

As the Nevada caucuses begin, I'm still pondering how pundits, the media in general, and people in general reacted to the Iowa caucuses.  My sense is that caucuses are a kind of community gathering where people share with others to get a sense of how the collective feels about the candidates.  But we are in a world that demands precision, demand instant results.  People get impatient if it takes a website to open in more than 2 seconds, so election results need to be available 20 minutes after the polls close.  But what do the numbers mean anyway?

Caucus Thoughts

I’ve been to two caucuses in Anchorage - 2008 and 2016.  People come together.  Lots of people.  There’s camaraderie,  laughter, crowds, confusion, donuts, and a chance to see lots of folks you haven’t seen for a while.  

Once into your precinct rooms, talk gets more serious, but there’s still a friendly banter about candidates.  It’s time to hear from proponents of different candidates, to ask questions, and be asked questions.  Some people have done their homework, others are seeking answers.  

People eventually get asked to stand in different parts of the room depending on which candidate they support.  Then those candidates with too few supporters are eliminated and their supporters get to join their second choice.  

If the group is small, it’s easy to get an accurate count.  If there are 100 or more, it starts getting trickier.  People have to stand still.  Did you count him already? What about her?

But if the tally is 111 or 113 it doesn’t really matter that much.  You’ve got a good sense that a lot more people want candidate A over candidate B.  Besides, the people in the room represent only those people who had the time, transportation, or interest to go.  There are plenty more people who couldn’t or just didn’t come.  

There’s lots good about a caucus.  The chance to see and talk and debate with lots of people - some good friends, some acquaintances you haven’t seen a while, and some strangers you want to see again or not.  It’s a way to get more information about candidates, to learn why others support or don’t support different candidates.  And it’s a way to get a sense of how many people prefer this candidate over that one.  It's a lot different from making the decision alone in the voting booth.

Nowadays, science and efficiency and legal (but not scientific) precision are demanded.  The people of the media have made elections into a sport with stats that tell us precisely what the electorate wants down to two or three decimal points.  

All this comes to mind as I watch the coverage of the Iowa caucuses.  Here we have an old fashioned process that allows neighbors and friends to work out who they want to support, even with the benefits of being able to pick a second choice when it’s clear their first choice isn’t going to make it.  In the past, I’m sure, these things never had to be lunar landing precise, just good enough.  And they served a lot of social functions that individually marking a ballot in a curtained off booth doesn’t serve.  People get a better sense of what those voting for other candidates are thinking.  And they even learn that people are voting for their own preference for different reasons.

This process has been coming into conflict with the increasing demands from the politicians and the media for precision.  Iowa’s attempts to ‘bring the caucus into the 21st Century’ by using an app, just didn’t work out.  And the candidates and the media, who need the certainty of precise numbers, were left to run off to New Hampshire without the resolution they needed as quickly as they needed it.  

It makes sense for elections to be precise, and if people choose not to vote, well, that’s their choice.  (Unless it’s manufactured by removing people from the voting rolls, limiting access to the polls by having fewer polling places, or not enough workers or ballots, and other such schemes.)  But this form of caucus has served a lot of other purposes beyond getting a final precise voting count.  

And the numerical precision that the media demand, really isn’t as precise or reflective of what people want any way.  And even when nearly 3 million more people voted for Hillary Clinton than for Donald Trump, the technicalities of the electoral college voided all those votes.   

And the purging of voters in states like Florida and Michigan, not to mention irregularities with the unbacked up voting machines, probably were enough to fix the electoral college vote.  (Greg Palast tells us that while Trump won by 13,107 in Michigan, 449,922 voters (mostly black) had been purged from the voting list.)

I’d note that Alaska has a petition gathering signatures now that would allow for ranked-choice voting.  That is, like in a caucus, they would be able to indicate their second and third choices, so two candidates they like wouldn’t split the vote and allow one they don’t like to win.  Which is part of what’s in the caucus process.  

I think we're being way too controlled by technological demands for an artificial accuracy and for instant turnaround in the elections.  The harder to measure social and civic benefits of voting itself are ignored and sacrificed in exchange.  And the bigger issues of voter suppression and hacking voting machines are not getting the attention they should get.  Trump will win this election only with the help of foreign propaganda, voter purging, and tampering with the count of votes, both electronic and otherwise.