TC Daily Planet’s Sheila Regan thinks so:
I have to admit that until this past week, I hadn’t been to a caucus since 1996. I don’t remember much about that caucus, except that it was long and boring, it took place at St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church, and I remember listening to speeches of people that wanted to be delegates.
This past week, I decided I should probably go, as I’ve been covering some of the races for the Daily Planet. Besides, it seemed like the citizenly thing to do. I didn’t really “study up” about what to expect, but in hindsight I really should have. I mean, I knew a lot about the different candidates, but in terms of the actual caucus process, I was pretty ignorant. It was one of the most confusing and irritating meetings I’ve ever experienced.
She goes on to detail her experience in the recent Minneapolis precinct caucuses, which she found to be less than inspiring. Below I have summed up those reasons in the form of a bullet list.
- No one knew the rules, kept changing the rules, and couldn’t explain the rules.
- Redundant bureaucracy.
- Fear of email and phone spam.
- Actual phone spam.
- Confusion and miscommunication.
- Lack of information.
The points she raises are all valid points. I’ve experienced them all myself and for anyone who has ever been to a precinct caucus, the above list is pretty much par for the course.
The caucuses I have attended have typically not been very well run, have been plagued with misinformation, redundant and usually unnecessary bureaucracy, confusion and issues with the rules. Always issues with the rules. There are never not issues with the rules.
To be clear, none of these problems have much of anything at all to do with the value of the caucuses themselves. They are all issues with the implementation of the caucuses, with the end user experience of the caucuses, so to speak.
Full disclosure, I am not a fan of the caucus system, but I’m not a fan of the caucus system for reasons having little to do with the reasons that have been discussed so far in this post. The reason’s that have been discussed so far in this post are all things about the caucus system that can be fixed.
There is nothing fundamental about caucuses that would cause Sheila Regan to decide that caucuses are stupid. She had a bad user experience. Because user experience is a thing that most every business is trying in some way to improve, people are coming to expect more from the user experience.
The longer the DFL caucuses fail to address this issue, the more Sheila Regans there will be.
This post was written by Tony Petrangelo and originally published on LeftMN. Follow Tony on Twitter: @TonyAngelo.
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Insiders club
I was unhappy with the degree to which my caucus experience felt like an “insiders club”. Lots of the folks obviously knew each other and knew how things worked, and it all felt far more exclusive than inclusive.
Add to that the fact that they required everyone to write their names on the ballots they were casting or they wouldn’t be counted and I had enough and walked out in the middle of it.
Caucuses stupid?
A lot of the problems mentioned are the kind of problems you have when you are dependent on volunteers who have varying levels of commitment to the process. I ended being a caucus organizer a few years ago. I had no experience. Most of the people were people who knew how the system operated so I doubt my inability to explain the rules, etc. turned anybody away. That’s not always going to be the case. And the rules are often arcane and in many cases, they are downsright stupid.
Caucuses are good but not for what they’re designed to do: endorse candidates for office. Especially for federal offices where candidates must depend on constant fundraising, party endorsement has become meaningless. The caucus system ought to be scrapped for federal and statewide offices. They still make some sense for State Senate and House candidates but it’s not a lot of sense.
Caucuses Stupid Insiders’ Club?
I like to bring international friends and citizen wanna-be’s to the precinct caucus whenever I can. It really helps put the whole exercise in perspective for me.
I explain that on precinct caucus night, at thousands of different locations around the state, the political parties dissolve, and the neighbors that show up that night become the newly reconstituted party. Whether the beliefs and values of the caucus night participants agree with or differ from their party leaders, elected officials, or party platform, those neighbors will elect delegates and pass resolutions that will collectively correct the course of their party.
Several times friends from other continents have been amazed, asking, “You really mean to say that you don’t have to own a certain amount of property or contribute a lot of money to participate in this?!”
We are so fortunate to have such a strong mechanism of grass roots democracy here.
Is the process unwieldy? Yeah sometimes. Do people feel left out or left in the dark? Not in my experience, but I’ve heard stories that it’s like that in some caucuses. But in my experience a lot of very kind people have bent over backwards to make sure that everyone involved gets all the explanation they need to fully and fairly participate.
The thing that makes caucuses superior to primaries is that they can’t be controlled by corporate political consultants. The marketing science is well documented how to steal a primary if you have enough money for polling, focus groups and TV ad campaigns. There’s just too many sites and too much joyful chaos to control in the caucus system to pull that off. (That’s why political consultants tend to hate caucuses.)
In my party (and I assume in any others) there is the equivalent of an internal court of appeals where anyone who feels that they were treated unfairly can present their complaint.
I could go on, but time to go to caucus!