January 2, 2008, 12:15 pm
Why The Iowa Caucuses Are Unfair
Iowa holds it's first-in-the-nation caucus this Thursday, and the races are tight. Since it's the general consensus among most pundits that regardless of the nominee, if the election were held today, the Democrats would win it. But if that's true, then why is it that the state of Iowa, population 2,892,085, gets to decide for the rest of America who the next President will be?
| Race | Iowa | United States* |
| White | 91.5% | 73.9% |
| Hispanic | 3.7% | 14.8% |
| Black | 2.3% | 12.4% |
| Asian | 1.4% | 4.4% |
| American Indian | 0.3% | 0.9% |
| Other | 0.8% | 8.3% |
The absentee rules and caucus rules are so stringient that military members serving abroad are barred from voting, as is even the Republican Party chairman for Iowa, Ray Hoffman, who will be out of town on party business (but within Iowa itself). The rules also seem to penalize working class voters who are at work during the caucuses, further shifting the demographic to the wealthy and middle-aged voters to pick the next President.
Some of the parties tried to add some fairness back into the process, particularly the Democrats by moving Nevada between the caucus and the New Hampshire primary, and South Carolina closely following (to highlight the Hispanic and African American demographics). But Iowa and New Hampshire responded by moving their contests to earlier in the year, and both threatened to move them into December 2007 if necessary to remain first in the nation. Additionally, with momentum needed to propel a candidate to the February 5th "Super Tuesday" contest the positions of Iowa and New Hampshire as must-win states has been increased, rather than decreased, thus increasing their overall voting power.
Iowa clearly does not represent the national polls in terms of preference for Democratic and Republican candidates. In Iowa, Barack Obama leads the pack with a 32% lead over Hillary Clinton's 25% and John Edwards' 24% showing in polls. But nationally, Hillary Clinton has almost 49% compared to Barack Obama's 20%. A win tomorrow night in Iowa will give the winner almost a week of uninterupted news coverage, and a dual win in New Hampshire will convince most voters of a foregone nomination, meaning that the Super Tuesday contest will be of little relevance to the overall nominating process, simply rubber-stamping the nominations of those two states.
The critical importance of the President means that these contests should not be left up to two relatively unimportant states like Iowa and New Hampshire. Instead, these contests should be held by larger states, or more reasonably, on a national scale, just like the Presidential election. Each party has a right to pick its leaders, but the nation has a right to pick its Presidents. Leaving this decision up to 10 million people in two states is neither fair nor advisable.
Want to make a comment?
Log in below or Sign Up!
Comments:
pianoguy wrote on January 3, 2008, 1:29 pm:
A true sign of humility is when you don't have to assert your importance. And whoever said that politics was fair ("all's fair in love and war"...but not politics)
Yet I agree. Not that it's likely to happen, but why not EVERY primary on one day (like the election)? Just let them try to be everywhere at once (Huckabee would try).