Some final polls and trends before the caucuses.
'You basically are nothing': the Americans shut out of the Iowa caucuses
Iowans are barred from voting for life once they commit a felony, and people can’t vote even if they committed a crime decades ago. The state’s policy, one of the strictest in the country, means more than 42,000 Iowans out of prison won’t have a say in choosing a presidential candidate. Almost 10% of the black voting age population can’t vote because of a felony conviction.
For decades, the Iowa caucuses have marked the beginning of the presidential primary, and often set the tone for the election year. But the event has come under increasing scrutiny for giving some voters – namely white and wealthy Iowans – outsized power in choosing the president in a state that’s already more than 90% white. Meanwhile, the physical and legal barriers built into the structure of the caucuses leave out large swaths of the population, whether they are disabled, work long hours, or were once convicted of a crime.
www.theguardian.com/...
The #IACaucus is Monday, February 3, 2020.
Doors open at 6:30PM.You MUST be in line by 7PM, AFTERWARDS, THE DOORS WILL BE CLOSED!
Monday, Feb 3, 2020 · 2:15:38 PM +00:00
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annieli
Somewhere around 11:00 EST on February 3rd, the Iowa Democratic Party will announce three important numbers:
- The “first expression of presidential preference”
- The “final expression of presidential preference”
- The “state delegate equivalency”
The “first expression of preference” will be a count of the first vote Iowans take when they come into the precinct meeting. The precinct chairperson will count these cards and announce the results. The “first expression of preference” will most closely resemble what most Americans are used to—a simple tally of who the voters like the best.
Then the Iowans whose presidential candidate does not get 15% of the vote will be allowed to vote for their second choice—and here’s where the real fun begins. Voters for candidates who met the 15% threshold will have a minimum of 15 minutes to try and convince their neighbors that they should come and join their group. Persuasion techniques vary from earnest policy discussions to cookies and popcorn. (As far as I know cold, hard cash has never been used. Iowans tend to be a law-abiding bunch.) When that portion of the evening concludes, the precinct chair and secretary will calculate the second number to be released, the “final expression of preference.” This will incorporate the second choices of many Iowans—a feature that is not part of most American elections unless they’ve adopted a system known as “ranked-choice voting.”
The final decision of the evening will be to calculate how many delegates each presidential candidate will get to send to the county convention using a formula laid out in the Iowa Delegate Selection Plan. These people will attend the county conventions to be held later in March. The Iowa Democratic Party will aggregate these votes by congressional district and this vote will estimate the number of national convention delegates each presidential candidate will have when the Democratic Convention opens in July, referred to as the “state delegate equivalency.”