It feels like a caucus exists to arbitrarily filter out participants based on how long they take. Not everyone has the 2-3 hours to spend on a caucus vote. Why don't they just vote via paper ballot?
It's worth noting that the caucus is supposed to be much more than just registering your presidential preference. The idea is that you have a regular gathering with your neighbors to discuss political concerns. That most people view it as an elaborate and slow version of a primary is an indictment of how sad the state of political participation in our country is.
That being said, it is an excellent way to exclude people who have other responsibilities or difficulty making it out for several hours on a week night.
It sounds like it's good at excluding a number of participants: those with physical disabilities, parents of young children, minimum wage workers who can't get time off, on-duty medical and emergency personnel, etc.
As a point of interest, those last groups are theoretically covered. I've heard of a concept of workplace caucus groups, where voters who can't get away (like medical staff) can be counted with others on the same shift. I have no idea how prevalent that is, and right now I can't find any relevant documentation either, so maybe it's not really a thing?
Because Iowa chose to have a caucus, not a primary.
If you’re not an Iowa voter, there are a million political bikesheds that would have more relevance to your life. You’re basically just complaining about the pace of a television program.
In this specific case? Because Iowa wanted to be the first contest in the nomination process, but NH legally gets to run the first primary. Caucusing is an older alternative to voting that served as a loophole to allow Iowa to go first.
One of the changes this year was that if your candidate made it through the first round of voting, you could go home. So that should have helped the situation somewhat, but I wonder if it contributed to the inconsistencies. At least there’s a paper trail this year too.
