SPECIAL EDITION!!!! EXPLAINING THE DELEGATES & A Report from the Caucuses

Monday, March 19, 2012

Letter From the Editor

This is a special spring break edition of The Daily Rundown dedicated to

helping YOU understand the delegate process which I so often talk about. It is

combined with my report from the 2012 Missouri caucuses. I hope you learn a

lot and can understand everything.

NOTE: While many things come in handy whenever I write The Daily

Rundown, for this special edition my main sources were the blog

DemocraticConventionWatch (and Matt in particular for helping me

understand everything), The Green Papers, The Washington Post, and Nate

Silvers New York Times blog FiveThirtyEight. Some of this is also my math

and calculations, which may be wrong.

ENJOY!

Its the Delegates, Stupid

What Really Matters I hate to say it, but in the primary process, in some

states, what you vote DOESNT EXACTLY MATTER AS MUCH!!! What

really matters? DELEGATES

Why, Why, Why I relate the confusing delegate process to the equally

confusing process of the Electoral College. The first question then, is why was

that ever put into place. The answer, I believe, was that our founding fathers

were constantly worried with one thing when writing a whole new

constitution for our country: making a process that couldnt be corrupt, or

subject to monarch-like cheating. Really, they thought choosing the nations

leader was safer in the hands of electors members of the Electoral College

than in the hands of all the everyday, average American citizens.

Heres what you dont know: While electors are always chosen by state party

committees, YOU get to choose the delegates.

What That Means

The Delegates There are 2,286 delegates that are planning to go to the

Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida from August 27-30, 2012.

SUPERDELEGATES Of those, 6 percent, 126 people, are superdelegates!!!!

In the Republican Party, 42 of the states/territories have three delegates who

can vote for whoever they want at the convention. These delegates, officially

called Automatic Delegates and unofficially called superdelegates, are in other

words not bound by their states

primary/caucus results. In the

Republican Party, each

state/territory gets three

superdelegates: the states

Republican Party Chairman/women

and the two Republican National

Committee members from that state.

Because of state party rules,

Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Georgia,

Idaho, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan,

Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, South Carolina, and

Utahs superdelegates must vote for the winner of the states contest at the

convention. In other words, they arent so super.

The Two superdelegate cartoons are from the 2008 Democratic primaries

(when superdelegates really mattered). The one above to the right

studentnewsdaily.com, while the one above to the left is from

apgovernment2010.yolasite.com.

The Others There are 2,160 other delegates that will go to the 2012

Republican National Convention. Most of the actual delegates, not necessarily

the people they will be bound to, will be chosen at caucuses and conventions

like the meeting I attended Saturday, and the ones YOU can still attend.

Of the 2,160, 84 will be chosen by state party conventions and state

committees, not the states vote. Like superdelegates, they will go to the

convention unbound to any candidate, free to vote for whoever they please.

188 delegates will be picked through caucuses, but will go to the convention

unbound. This means that around 25 percent, over 400, of the convention

delegates will be unbound.

According to The Washington Post, 504 delegates to the RNC will have been

chosen by either a primary or a caucus using the winner-take-all system,

basically meaning if you win a state, you get all their delegates.

The final 233 delegates are awarded by yet another process, this one called

hybrid proportional. The most I can tell you about hybrid is that it is a

mixture of winner-take-all and proportional, the system which awards

delegates by congressional districts (918 delegates are allocated that way).

Some delegates are given to the winner, and some are allocated by the

congressional districts.

So How Are They Really Chosen?

More Stuff About Delegates That was a rough, short, and hopefully-simple-

enough overview of how delegates are allocated, which, is, mostly, by your

vote, even though sometimes indirectly. However, it didnt explain how

delegates are chosen.

YOU Can Become A Delegate, Too! Because, believe it or not, delegates are

real people, too. With a flick of a pen, YOU too can run for, and possibly

elected, as a delegate.

In both parties, in most states, you can write up a form and give it to your state

party headquarters, most likely in the capital of the state. You will be required

to give a candidate preference, among other pieces of information.

You will then be voted on at a caucus or convention in most states.

A Show Me-State Showdown

The caucus system is a mess. Especially in Missouri. The first contest of the 2012

Republican nominating process was the Iowa cacusues in early January. There, Mitt

Romney was initially declared the winner, a while before the Iowa Republican

Party disagreed with the results, and instead declared Rick Santorum the victor. A

month later, counting votes for the Nevada caucuses took nearly two days. Later

that month, ballots for the Maine caucuses went missing. It was then revealed that

results from Maine communities that rescheduled caucuses due to snow on the set

date were ignored. The Maine Republican Party refused to hold a recount, and

because of that, Mitt Romney won Maine by only 239 votes over Ron Paul,

according to POLITICO.

This year, the Missouri Republican Party decided to hold caucuses by county across

the state to decide who would represent the state in later conventions. Most of

Missouris 114 counties held caucuses meetings at 10 AM on Saturday, March 17.

St. Louis County, where I live, is so big that each township within the county held

its own caucuses. I attended the caucus for the University township. The meeting

was held at a place called Centennial Commons, a recreation center in the township.

When I walked in the caucus at around 9:45, I thought I knew what to expect. I

thought participants would be electing delegates to attend later meetings in April

and June that would decide who Missouris delegates would be allocated to. In

essence, on March 17, no one: not Rick Santorum, or Mitt Romney, or anyone,

would be chosen as the winner of the Missouri caucuses. No delegates would be

bound to a candidate. I knew that, and I knew that was right, yet, I was confused.

Becauseits confusing.

After my mom and I got seated in the third row, I began to talk to two young

gentlemen on my right. Both of them were Ron Paul supporters, and one had never

been to a caucus before. They both told me that they, too, were confused by

Missouris nominating process, and hadnt voted in the non-binding Missouri

primary in February, saying that it was a waste of time.

Beforehand, I had also been told that at promptly 10 AM, the doors would be

locked and the meeting would begin. At least in the University caucus, that was not

the case. To vote in the Missouri caucuses, you had to be a registered voter in that

county (or township) and you had to state that you were a Republican. At 10, local

officials were verifying that all the participants were registered voters in the

township. As they verified each person, they called out the persons name, and told

them that they could move closer. This took quite a while.

When they were done, there were about 50 people in the room. Quite a few had not

been called, including the Ron Paul supporter to my right. He was told that he was

not a registered voter in the township, and since doors in all the caucuses locked at

10, he was told it was too late to either verify his registration or to go elsewhere.

For the following 20 minutes, a fight between caucus goers and the officials broke

out, some participants arguing that they were, indeed, registered to vote in the

township. People asked why the Party was using townships to decide where voters

would caucus. The reason to all the confusion was understandable. I, along with

most of the other people who attended Saturdays caucuses, live in University City,

Missouri. University City, however, is broken up into three townships: University,

Clayton, and Hadley. Many residents of University City, including me, assumed

that they were in the University township because of the similar name.

At 10:28, Ted Engler, University township committeeman for the Missouri

Republican Party, started the meeting later than expected. He explained that a

township was the smallest political area in a state. Engler said that he had been

committeeman for the University township for 12 years, and that this was, by far,

that largest turnout he had ever had. Engler then said that soon he would be

stepping down.

The first order of business was to decide how to choose his replacement and the

delegates. Engler had clearly expected that participants would choose to vote by

slate, meaning he would propose all the committee positions at once, the

participants would vote on the slate, and everyone would leave. Some people,

already angered that they couldnt all participate, moved that instead of using the

slate, they would vote for all the offices individually. A vote was taken, and the

slate option won.

Two slates were then proposed, and Englers won. Englers slate chose delegates

for each convention that was split between Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron

Paul supporters. Following that, another uproar began. Some didnt understand at

all what was happening. Many thought that they would be able to decide the

delegates based on a vote, not that delegates would be chosen beforehand. Many

even incorrectly thought that they had come to vote for a presidential candidate.

Then more people challenged the slate system, and it was then thrown to another

vote with similar results: slate it was.

Furthermore, caucus goers were angered that they wouldnt be choosing a winner,

or even holding a straw poll that in no way whatsoever would make a difference to

anybody. Ted Angler didnt really want a straw poll. It was a waste of time, he said.

But the voters get what the voters want: Angler eventually caved. After he agreed to

hold a straw poll, he began to quickly call out the names of all four Republican

presidential candidates: Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, and finally Newt

Gingrich. And the results pretty much supported Ted Anglers proposal to give 2

delegates to Romney, Santorum, and Paul: 18 votes for Romney, 13 votes for

Santorum (including Angler), 12 votes for Paul, and 1 vote for Gingrich.

At the end of the day, the common feeling was that the caucus goers felt that they

werent herd. They felt that they had come to vote, and their vote didnt count.

Many of them, even the ones that got to vote, said that they were disenfranchised.

And I think thats the message America wants to send to politicians in 2012.

Whether youre a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent, or a Tea Partier, voters

are sick of backroom Washington politicking, and they want their voice to matter.

Thats what I heard from caucus-goers Saturday. Thats what they want the 2012

elections to be about.