The Texas Caucuses

Dr. S. patiently recorded Texas as an "open primary" state in his handy map. Except it's a little more complicated than that. Excluding the superdelegates, the Texas primary will only choose 2/3 of the pledged delegates. Yes, that's right, just two-thirds. The allocation is like California, where each district has a predetermined number of delegates based on prior elections. However, it is unlike every other state in that by "district" I don't mean congressional district, but Texas Senatorial District. The Republicans in Texas are using congressional districts for their apportionment, just to confuse matters. Unusually heavy turnout in rural Latino districts will not translate into additional delegates for those districts.

The other third of delegates are chosen by precinct caucuses on election night starting at 7:15pm after the polls close. Read that again. This is not a joke. The precinct caucuses choose delegates to county conventions, who then choose delegates to the state convention, which in turn meets in June and selects delegates on a proportional basis. So you kind of know on election night how the math will work out at the end... sort of.

Worse, the process of running these caucuses is, apparently, messy. According to the Washington post, the Democratic party is moribund in many precincts, so there may not be precinct chairs. According to the post: "If it is time for the caucus and there is no precinct chair, party officials decided, the task of overseeing the vote will fall to the first person who collects the packet of materials used to run the caucus.... The first person in the door picks it up and controls it. So the rules are designed to create a race to the packet. You can imagine what that might look like." Indeed, you can imagine. Hand it to Texas to add, to the indignities of party democracy, a footrace.

Who will this benefit? Electorally, perhaps Obama, in that caucus goers in this situation must show up twice and understand these bizarre rules, which favors a wealthier, more educated, and more-English-fluent voters. Otherwise, I don't think anyone benefits by such a godawful mess.

The only thing worse is the Washington democratic primary being held tomorrow, which chooses exactly zero delegates. Washington state law requires a primary, but doesn't require the parties to pay any attention to it. (Republicans allocate 1/2 of their delegates via primary, which sounds better, but means you can both vote and caucus. Voters are understandably confused about any system that asks them to vote twice).

I am beginning to understand what W.C. Fields meant when he said, "I don't belong to an organized political party - I'm a Democrat."