As someone who loathes the place Iowa has in our system

[dsc]

I do feel the need to push back on a couple of criticisms of Iowa. First, the delegate allocation. It is by no means unusual for the delegate allocation to disagree with the popular vote in primaries as well. To see that look at NC. We have 13 districts and when our plan was developed, there were three we routinely won by huge margins Districts 1,4, and 12. They get 8,9, and 8 delegates respectively. 9 districts get 4 or 5 delegates. One gets 6. Now they might be proportional to Democratic vote or at least close. But here is the thing. They do have the 15% rule. So say that one candidate gets 50% of the vote and three candidates get 17%, 16%, and 15% respectively. In districts with 8 delegates the split would be 5,1,1,1. In the district with 9 it would be 6,1,1,1 but in the ones with 4 it would be 1,1,1,1. The same vote total generates wildly different results.

Second, one part of voting the caucus actually gets right. Ideally our primary candidate should be the candidate that is viewed favorably by the widest variety of people. The caucus system rewards that quality in a candidate. Pete was a lot of people's second choice as well as many people's first. That served him well. It also, serves our party well to have a candidate who isn't polarizing. Now, that said, many young people do have huge problems with him and he isn't exactly doing fantastic with POC either. In the end, those qualities might be fatal, but the fact is the quality that propelled him to a likely win in Iowa (having a strong level of support nearly everywhere) is a quality that ought to be favored by our primary system. The good news is we could have that. We could use instant run off with a change to account for proportional viability.

People would rank their choices. Candidates with less than 15% viability would be eliminated starting with the candidate with the least first place votes. Reallocate then if there is a candidate below 15%, eliminate the candidate with the least, reallocate and check again. Repeat until no one remains with less than 15% of the vote. This would reward candidates who are 2nd and 3rd choices of many different swaths of people.

[redqueen]

1. This ignores a lot of issues. People who are introverts,

people with social anxiety, and people who don't easily handle being pressured by others are not able to fully participate.

[dsc]

2. that's why I don't think we should caucus

and instead suggest a someone altered form of instant run off. Honestly I think that should be done in all of our states not just Iowa.

[redqueen]

3. Agreed. Ranked choice + instant runoff. Many have wanted these reforms for years.

Unfortunately the party leaders apparently don't feel the same.

[femmedem]

4. +1 n/t