It's Primary (And Caucus) Time!

Happy Election Year! Before you come back to CMU for the spring semester, you'll probably want to pick up an absentee primary ballot for the January 15 primary at your city or township clerk's office.

When you pick up your ballot, you will see five choices:

• Hillary Clinton
  
• Chris Dodd
  
• Mike Gravel
  
• Dennis Kucinich
  
• Uncommitted

The Michigan Democratic Party recommends that you vote Uncommitted if you support one of the candidates not on the Michigan ballot (Joe Biden, John Edwards, Barack Obama, or Bill Richardson).

If at least 15% of the voters in your congressional district vote for a certain candidate or for Uncommitted, that caandidate (or Uncommitted) will receive a percentage of the Democratic National Convention delegates allocated to that district (of which there will be between 4 and 7, depending on how well Kerry, Gore, and Clinton did in those districts). If a candidate or Uncomiktted receives 15% of the vote statewide, they will receive a portion of Michigan's 45 statewide delegate votes. (Delegates themselves will be elected at a future date). This means that even if you don't think your candidate has a chance in heck of winning Michigan, (s)he could still win some delegates.

Now, as for Iowa. The upcoming caucuses are an unusual, somewhat hard-to-explain process.

Voters will first gather in designated areas of the caucus site (usually a gymnasium, conference room, or if a precinct is small, perhaps someone's home), based on whom they support for President. So there will be a section designated for Obama, one for Clinton, one for Edwards, one for Biden, etc.

For thirty minutes supporters of each candidate will try to persuade people to come support their candidate.

When the thirty minutes are up, officials will take an initial count and determine which candidates have enough votes in the caucus to allow for a delegate supporting that candidate to be elected from that precinct to the county convention.

For the next thirty minutes after that, some caucus members will re-align; that is, those who support candidates who did not receive enough suppoort in the first round will often team up with candidates that could win delegates.

After those thirty minutes are up, a final tally is taken, and delegates are elected to the county convention proportionally. That is, the number of delegates elected to that convention will be divvied up amongst the Presidential candidates based on how many caucus-goers suppoort them.

Perhaps, like me, you understand things better when explained in the form of an example.

Say you live in Iowa and you attend the caucus supporting Ontario Sneed for President. You go to the part of the caucus room where other Sneed suppoorters are gathered. For thirty minutes, you may stay in the Sneed section, or you may go around the room asking people elsewhere in the room to support Sneed (incluiding those who aren't in a candidate's section). After those thirty minutes are up, the first vote is taken, and it is determined that there aren't many others supporting Sneed - just you and a few other bare-chested folks wearing maroon letters. (I just had to get that Sneed's Creed reference there for you, Karl and Bryan. ;-) )

You may decide to stay in hopes that others will come to the Sneed group, giving him enough support to elect a delegate to represent him. Or you and your fellow Sneed supporters may decide to go into groups supporting other candidates with views such as Sneed's. You may go around the room hearing supporters of various candidates and ask them why you should support their campaign. Finally, you decide that Dan Lefevour offers the kind of leadership America needs at this critical juncture. So you decide to make him your final choice.

In the end, Lefevour gets the support of 40% of caucus-goers, with Ike Brown taking 40% and Damien Linson, 20%. Your precinct will elect five delegates to the County Convention. This means that two of the delegates will be Lefevour supporters, two will be Brown supporters, and one will have supported Linson.

When you watch the returns on caucus night, the percentages you see each candidate get are actually based on the number of delegates elected to the conventions. In other words, if Biden gets 18% in Iowa, that will mean he got 18% of the delegates elected to those conventions.

Confused? So am I. But that's the way it is.