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The Iowa caucuses are tonight. A lot of people are excited because this will hopefully winnow the field from 16 (I think) candidates left to 5 or 6 viable candidates. Others are excited because they get to leave Iowa (Iowa in December and January is not the happiest place on Earth).But for me, I almost wish I lived in Iowa to participate in the Democratic caucus. The Republican caucus is not nearly as much fun because they use secret ballots and it is more of a typical election. The Democrats used an antiquated system that is about as close to pure open democracy as we get.

For the Democratic caucus, everyone lines up at 7:00 pm sharp. If you’re there at 7:01, too bad you’re locked out. They pick spots on the wall and everyone that likes Candidate A lines up there. If you’re group has fewer than 15% of the overall vote, your candidate is eliminated and the entire process starts again with fewer candidates.

This happens until there are no more “not viable” candidates. The results are mailed (yes, mailed) to the DNC headquarters in Des Moines which tallies the votes and assigns the number of delegates to each candidate based upon statewide returns.

And if you think the “not viable” process is not worth it, you might want to ask John Edwards. The only reason he got the VP nod in ‘04 was because of his strong finish in Iowa. Dennis Kucinich’s voters went largely for Edwards in the second round of voting and that propelled him past Gephardt and Dean. Because of this, he’s a viable candidate in ‘08 as well and hoping for a lot of the castoffs as their “second choice”. Trust me, the other candidates are fearful of this happening again (hence all the talk about him being a “strong finisher”).

I think it’s a cool little quirk of our system. Now, should Iowa be first? That’s a debatable topic for somebody else. I just think we should appreciate the quaintness of this method of choosing a candidate.