February 26th, 2020 | Written By - Eleanor Pompa '23
With the presidential elections happening later this year, the caucuses and the primaries are important for selecting candidates from each party. If you need a refresher on what a caucus actually is, it is “a closed meeting of a group of persons belonging to the same political party or faction usually to select candidates or to decide on policy.” Typically, people gather at a set location in each of the precincts in a state and discuss who is the top candidate rather than having a traditional vote with a ballot. The first state to hold a caucus every election year is Iowa and this year the Iowa caucuses were held on February 3rd, 2020. They were widely regarded as a disaster for multiple reasons. The first reason was an app that allowed voters to record the results of the caucuses, which failed to work and was “buggy.” Because of this, people started phoning in reports or sending pictures of handwritten reports, which were hard to read and created chaos and confusion. In addition to this, some of the people in charge did not know how to operate the system used to record the votes. This led to results having to be recalculated, which delayed the reporting of the winner of the caucus. The results were released a few days after the event, with Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders neck and neck in the lead. The next state to hold a nominating contest this year was New Hampshire, which held a primary on February 11th. There were no problems at this primary and Sanders pulled ahead of Buttigieg by a small percent. With these two candidates tying at first place in the race, it raises questions about a centrist (Buttigieg) and a “Democratic Socialist” (Sanders) at the lead and what it could mean for the election.
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