Iowa Caucus: The Animated Edition!
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Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007
Ever wonder what the heck the Iowa caucus is really all about? Into animated stick figures? Man, have we got the video for you. We lay it all out for you in this week’s episode.
10/25 UPDATE: The Dems will caucus on Jan 3rd.
1/7/08 UPDATE: Despite record-high voter participation in last week’s Iowa caucuses, voter turnout in Iowa didn’t break 17 percent. Watch this video report from Iowa to see who wasn’t caucusing, and why.
October 24th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Wow, I had no idea that’s how it actually worked. THanks!
October 25th, 2007 at 11:39 am
thanks
October 25th, 2007 at 7:02 pm
Excellent explanation.
One thing that you do not mention is that, as with most of our election system, there is a spoiler problem. The issue is that support for one candidate necessarily means a lack of support for another candidate.
A system that would work well to address this is range voting.
Voters submit votes rating candidates on a scale (say 0-9: 9=best). Votes are added together and the candidate with the highest score wins.
Example: Candidates A B and C.
A supporter of A who thinks that A is a likely contender to win could vote A=9 B=0 C=0. If that same voter actually preferred B but did not think that B was likely to win they could vote A=9 B=9 C=0.
Another voter might not have a favorite candidate but thought that A and C were ok with C slightly better. She could vote A=7 B=0 C=6. By not using the full range of the vote (eg at least one max scored candidate and one min scored candidate) she partially abstained. This may be her intent if she were unwilling to fully support any of the candidates.
http://rangevoting.org/
http://www.rangevoting.org/PlurPrim.html
October 29th, 2007 at 1:01 pm
Thank you!
December 26th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Finally I understand! Thanks for the explanation - now I’m gonna catch up on that sleep I’ve been missin’