Also, you complain that the caucuses are unfair to “families with young children, workers who have evening shifts, handicapped persons, and, generally, people with busy schedules.” These are not the people who would turn out for caucuses in rural areas anyway. They are older people with families and farmers who do not generally have a lot to do in early January. The caucuses thus not only discriminate against people in urban areas but supress turnout there as well.

And yes, I do have huge problems with the electoral college, in part because it overrepresents small states. But that’s another story…

I don’t have time to write a long comment now, but I want to respond to your point that the system makes sure that even if a lot of shift workers or whatever can’t come out on caucus night, “the system currently in place ensures that their precinct will still be important. And precincts are the smallest geographic unit our election officials recognize for general elections, so it is assumed that others in your precinct likely represent similar interests to yours.”

I don’t see why the system should assume that. People might be out of step with their neighbors for any number of reasons (I actually know a Kucinich supporter who lives in the exurbs). Why is it ok to wipe out their votes?

In theory, the threshold weeds out “fringe” candidates, but this argument does not convince me. In my precinct, Gephardt was not viable in 1988, the year he won the caucuses.

Many countries have proportional representation electoral systems with a threshold that political parties need to clear in order to be represented in parliament. For instance, in Germany a party that falls below the 5 percent threshold will not win seats in the parliament. No country with that kind of system has a threshold as high as 15 percent. Turkey is the highest with a 10 percent threshold, and many political scientists think that is too high.

The 15 percent viability threshold is just not fair.

But like I said, I welcome the dialogue and look forward to your forthcoming posts in defense of the caucuses. If you can come up with some arguments in favor of not being able to express a candidate preference by secret ballot, I’d be interested in hearing those.

Why should Iowa a small state get to play such a large role in selecting Presidential Nominees? Wouldn’t a slightly larger
coastal state, like Oregon, make more sense.

But, you say, that will make it more difficult for the candidates to campaign. So what? They’ll have to appeal to an entire nation instead of just sitting down to coffee with Farmer Joe in Waterloo and telling him whatever his itching ears want to hear.