I'm glad California has moved toward the other end of the spectrum with permanent absentee voting, which is even more enfranchising than a typical voting scenario, except for those unable to afford the stamp. Though I do worry that my votes may not be actually counted.

Well, absentee voting isn't really possible with caucusing. However, I do think most of the advantages of caucusing can be kept by moving towards Instant Runoff Voting.

Good post, I agree with you here. The caucus is what we've got, and what really pisses me off about the Hillary Clinton campaign's crap here, is the way they were perfectly happy to go with this caucus system as it was-- and then, like a bunch of losers, tried to change the rules at the last minute when they lost the endorsement.

It's like some irritating little kid who, when he's losing a game of soccer or catch with the other kids, protests that the rules aren't fair and need to be changed.

This caucus plan has been in place for 9 months now, and not a peep from the teacher's union or other Clinton supporters before. (Bill Clinton even endorsed the lawsuit, idiot that he has become.) In fact, having the caucus on a Saturday was a way to help the teachers and others who were off on Saturday-- the whole point of the at-large caucus sites on the Strip in the casinos, is to facilitate voting by people who do have to work Saturdays. Which, frankly, is admirable, no matter how important the specifics. And what matters is, the Clinton campaign agreed to this before. If candidates could bring these last-minute lawsuits like this, then our entire electoral system would break down, because they would just focus-group voters and find out where they were weak, then try to selectively disenfranchise voters in those weak regions. It's pathetic and a mockery of our democracy, what the Clintons are attempting to do.

Also, the caucus sites in the casinos aren't restricted to casino workers-- anyone with the relevant geographical connection can vote there. This is basically the same sort of thing that is done in other states, with polling places put in pertinent sites to facilitate voting for people with busy situations who might otherwise find it difficult to cast ballots.

I actually used to support Hillary, but I and most around me will never vote for her now. We just won't, we don't care if she's nominated. This whole race-baiting crap with Obama-- not the race-baiting itself, but even more so the false accusations that Obama is playing the race card (when he himself has not said a thing about it)-- you get the sense the Clinton campaign thinks were idiots, and we don't know what's actually going on.

So we won't vote for Hillary. If she's nominated by the Dems, I'll probably write in a name or perhaps vote Third Party. Many of my Dem friends would vote for John McCain. That's how much that Hillary has angered us with these tactics.

I'm actually with the Clinton people on this (and this going to be pretty much the only time you hear me say that).

As I understand it, the current system is that you have to caucus where you live. If you can't be at home (if you work far away from your home, for example), then you can't vote. The newly created exception is for a series of "at-large" voting locations that exist solely on the strip. This means that people working on the strip get an advantage that people working anywhere else in the state don't get. And guess what? The biggest union which will likely represent most of the people at those at-large caucuses just endorsed Obama. Seems questionable.

If you're concerned about allowing more people to participate in the caucuses (and you should be), why not let people simply caucus at any location throughout the state without regard to their home location? Why punish people who live in Vegas but work in Pahrump, but reward people who live in Pahrump but work in Las Vegas? It benefits a specific demographic to the expense of the rest of the state.

If the party said that it was going to let the people who live in big cities (more liberal) vote online while people who live out in the country (more conservative) had to vote at inconvenient polling places, people would be understandably unhappy. They're doing the same thing here, just to a smaller degree.

I agree with you, but do you think this is a legal issue that can be resolved in a lawsuit? My point is that caucuses are already unfair, and are not subject to equal rights laws since it is intra-party. These at-large precincts were made to accommodate what's probably the largest concentrated working population in the state of Nevada, to increase overall Democratic voter participation. It's the Party's call. Now, I hope they realize the unfairness of this and move to primaries in the future. But caucuses are unfair to everybody who's infirm, who's working, etc. Why suppress the vote of thousands of people just to arbitrarily address one point of unfairness? It's petty, and it's political.

This concession was made over 9 months ago, and is a testament to how much influence Culinary has in this state. Maybe the Party will learn their lesson.

I too am really troubled by the way the Clintons have been acting lately. The NYTimes political blog said it really well a few days ago:
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/14/the-clintons-and-history/
I waffled between her and Barack for a while, but now I'm rock solid Obama. I'm not quite as hard core as you, Sue L., in that I would probably vote for her if she got the nomination (unless Bloomberg got in). Even if she is ruthless, I'm way closer to her views than those of, say, McCain or Romney.

If there were fully at-large caucuses allowed, could this result in gerrymandering attempts, like where a caucus that would normally be overwhelmingly pro-obama ships some people off to borderline caucuses to boost the number of precincts? Are caucus results calculated by precinct, or lumped together? Or would this be too convoluted to make a gerrymander attempt viable? This assumes caucuses are kept, of course.

Well, it would require determining how to portion out the number of delegates to assign to each caucus location, based on turnout. I think that would work, but it's different than how they do it now.

The Clintons "changing" to the offensive is yet another reason I don't like election campaigns that go on too long--because candidates end up completely distorting themselves and their views to not fall into media traps, or get themselves out of media traps. Is there another country that drags candidates (and their money) through such a long haul? Frankly, I find it really disturbing that they're not doing their day jobs. I believe I'm right that elections in Canada are not allowed to be longer than 5 weeks--this means you don't have to be a millionaire to run, everyone gets all the information they need at once, and you move on to business at hand! These primaries are interesting, but frankly, I don't understand why we all can't pick the nominees at once; no one in Iowa, NH, Nevada or even Mass represents me. Yet inevitably, it will influence through the media, how others vote based on who's ahead. This isn't a horse race! I find it embarassing that Oprah and baseball stars affect our elections. Is a President necessarily someone that can ride on a bus for two years, take slander, strategize against the media, and respond to every school child, business owner, cowboy, stripper, and union labourer? But maybe someone needs to explain to me how this is all democratic. I find it really hard to understand how this is advancing our country.

Annie, very valid points. A question: how do the parties pick their candidates in Canada? It's really the primaries that drag things out here, not the general election, and that's because of the way the parties use to choose their nominees.

"I don't understand why we all can't pick the nominees at once"

This I can respond to. If every state voted in the primary at once, whoever had the most money and the most famous name would win immediately. I like the small state scrutiny, because it brings out different facets of the candidates. However, I don't like how it's the same 2 states that have the early influence.

And once again, the Iowa/NH dominance is a fault of the party system (and indirectly, our poor election system).

as long as we all know that hillary thinks martin luther king was a little bitch.

Hey, the semi-Canadian said "labour"! :}

I am surprised to learn that you can only caucus where you live, under normal circumstances. The entire country really oughta change to permanent absentee voting. Either that or they should give us a federal voting holiday.

I agree that this lawsuit reflects very poorly on Clinton, and I will be taking it into account when I snoop on her voting record this weekend.

Even if federal laws were made to accommodate permanent absentee voting, it wouldn't apply to internal Party elections, which is what this caucus is. As far as I can tell, if the DNC wanted to, they could randomly invalidate every third vote.

I've been having the argument about whether parties can do whatever they want with primary votes for weeks with someone at school. He contends that the following would be Constitutionally acceptable methods of choosing nominees: only allowing one region to vote, only allowing one state to vote, only allowing those with an IQ over 140 to vote, only allowing those with a height of over 6 feet to vote.

I think he's wrong. He agrees that the parties couldn't say that only white people could vote. Or only men. There clearly are some Constitutional bounds that we wouldn't be willing to let the parties go beyond, but he thinks they are much narrower than I do.

I'm currently in election law, I'll let you know when we get to this issue. If the decisions don't currently prohibit the parties from doing wacky stuff with primaries, then the current decisions are wrong. Primary voting is so much a part of the system that it's outrageous to treat it as a non-governmental event.

Since Canada is parliamentary, I'm guessing there is no national election of a leader, only elections of members of parliament (who then pick a prime minister). So there's no way to have a national horse race, and also no need to spend money reaching anybody but your district. There can be national efforts to "Vote Labour" or "Vote Conservative" but since it doesn't mean the same person across the country, there won't be the same kind of focus.

RumorsDaily, I'm quite inclined to agree with your friend. There's no inherent right that a party chooses its nominee in a fair way -- as you know, parties aren't even mentioned in the constitution. Of course, if a party did something outrageous like your friend mentioned, I doubt it would remain a viable party for very long.

Jon's right, re: Parliamentary system. Sometimes key cabinet ministers aren't even re-elected in their "riding" and have to step down. MPs chose the leader of the party, who is then the PM if their party gets the "plurality." Canada is inherently more regional in its politics. The NDP (social-demo) party is most popular in the Atlantic provinces. And heck, QC has a provincial party whose tenet is separation with the federal government--they even have seats in the federal Parliament. A lot of Canadians find American politics more exciting, but I feel like Cdn politics is more real, more nitty-gritty. I feel like I know the politics of the environmental, labour, identity, and farming movements much more clearly in an election there. Here, I really feel more muddled by the media circus effect.

I do agree, Marco, that the mixed state, small town scrutiny by the school child, stripper, cowboy etc. across the US is obviously what should be happening. But really, don't Am candidates have to still vote at least on a minimum amount of bills in Congress (what they were elected to do) while they're running for office? Now that would be a real test--the bus rides, the press dealings, and still studying real issues that they'll be facing after elections. I guess that's what's different though--they are looking to move nationally and what works in NY won't look popular in Iowa. It makes me not trust what anyone is saying though--it's like they're getting into character for a Hollywood role, yet the script is fed to them so they're basing it off that, not their experiences, true beliefs or necessarily what they'll do in office. Again, wake me up on election day.

good luck at the caucus tomorrow, cm! Give us an update when it's over, yeah?