A New Issue Brief from The Century Foundation Shows Why We Need to Reshape the Nomination Process

24 October ’07, New York City—The debate over the influence and timing of the Iowa caucus obscures the most problematic issue, which is that Iowa has a caucus at all, according to a new report from The Century Foundation. In Has America Outgrown the Caucus? Some Thoughts on Reshaping the Nomination Contest, Tova Andrea Wang, Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation and nationally recognized expert on election reform, explains why caucuses violate the fundamental principles of voting rights, such as equality of opportunity to participate in the process and fair access to the ballot. “While it is absolutely good for democracy for citizens to engage in group deliberation about elections, this no longer makes sense as a mechanism for actually picking the two presidential candidates,” writes Wang. “The fact that legitimate, eligible, and indeed interested members of the community get left out of the caucuses, with some voters effectively barred from participating in them, outweighs any cultural attachment some may have to the caucus system.” Nominating candidates was at one time the province of party bosses, but they are now chosen through public nominating contests, Wang says. To continue to make the primary process more democratic, political parties, state legislators and the federal government must approach the system with the same commitment to voting rights as they do with general elections.

The report shows that the principal problem with the caucus system is the extraordinarily low participation rates. Wang points out that while primary turnout is generally poor, in states with caucuses turnout is even worse. In the 2004 presidential primary in New Hampshire, which has always been the first primary of the election, the turnout was 29.9 percent; the participation in Iowa’s Democratic caucus that year was about 6 percent of eligible voters in the state. Data show that Iowa was the high-water mark, with Wyoming bottoming out with 0.2 percent participation of eligible voters. Participation in Democratic state caucuses in 2004 were was follows:

• Iowa (January 19): 5.7 percent
• North Dakota (February 3): 2.3 percent
• Washington (February 7): 2.5 percent
• Michigan (February 7): 2.3 percent
• Maine (February 8): 1.8 percent
• Nevada (February 14): 0.6 percent
• Idaho (February 24): 0.5 percent
• Minnesota (March 2): 1.5 percent
• Kansas (March 13): 0.1 percent
• Wyoming (March 20): 0.2 percent

Other problems with the caucus system include:

• Discourages participation, even from motivated voters, because caucuses are held in one specific place for each district (school, restaurant, place of worship, private home), at a specific time, and participation usually requires at least a two-hour commitment.
• Discourages voters who do not want to speak or vote publicly
• Discourages campaigns from trying to attract new voters to the system because campaign workers know that only the most avid partisans and consistent voters will go through the tribulations of a caucus, so there is little motivation to identify and reach out to new voters
• Places burden particularly on eligible voters who are not in the state on caucus day, including members of the armed services serving overseas or away from home, workers for government agencies or nonprofits who are on assignment out of the country, and students who are attending out-of-state schools, and voters with disabilities; also places burden on voters with limited English proficiency
• Caucus voters are not representative of general election voters; they tend to be older and closer to the political extremes

Wang believes that the post expedient solution to problems with caucuses is to eliminate them entirely, replacing them with primaries. If states are opting for caucuses because they are generally paid for by the parties while states usually pay for primaries, federal funding should be made available for those states that can demonstrate true financial need.

However, since it would be politically difficult to do away with caucuses altogether, she makes two suggestions to increase the fairness and accessibility of the process:

• States with caucuses should allow voters for whom it is impossible to participate in the caucuses to vote by absentee ballot. This would include military and overseas voters and students.

• Some states, such as Iowa, have a strong historical, cultural, and social attachment to the ritual of caucuses. Wang proposes creating a two-stage nominating system in which citizens caucus to deliberate collectively about the candidates and then vote in a primary the following day. This would preserve the valuable exercise of public deliberation while still upholding voting rights.

Tova Wang is available for interviews and commentary on this and other topics related to election reform. For more information, please contact Christy Hicks at (212) 452-7723. For more information about election reform issues, visit The Century Foundation Election Reform web site at www.reformelections.org or our main site at www.tcf.org.