caucus

[jimrtex]

I was in Germany for local elections four years ago, and it seemed like their lists of candidates were selected by something like a caucus of party members from the local jurisdiction. There was no primary.

Can't speak for other states of Germany, but in Hesse that's true only of very small parties and the Greens. Other parties will have a convention, with every ward group sending two delegates or three. (The situation for state and federal lists is similar, although there'll be more party members per delegate, and the Greens use delegates as well.) But yeah, at Green Party local election list selection, even for a city as big as Frankfurt, any party member can just walk into the meeting and vote.

'convention' and 'caucus' are two names for the same process when used to nominate candidates.  In Texas, they are referred to as "precinct conventions", while in Iowa, they are referred to as "precinct caucuses".  In both states, they elect delegates to "county conventions" which in turn elect delegates to state conventions, which in turn elect delegates to national conventions.

In Texas, a party is recognized for the purpose of nominating candidates if they had a statewide candidate that received 5% of the vote in the previous election.  The Libertarian Party has usually maintained its qualification because the Democratic Party doesn't field candidates for all statewide judgeships (the Texas Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals).

Parties with greater than 20% of the vote in the last gubernatorial race must use primaries to nominate candidates.  Smaller parties (eg the Libertarian Party and maybe the Bell-lead Democrats) have the choice of using conventions or primaries to nominate.

Nonetheless, parties that have primaries also hold conventions.  The precinct conventions are held on the night of the primary, after the polls have closed.  These choose delegates to the county convention, which is held a few weeks later, and so on.  Since the primaries choose the candidates, the conventions mostly serve to determine the platform, and to help identify campaign activists, potential candidates, etc. 

The Libertarian Party uses the convention method to nominate candidates.  Since they usually don't have enough people to hold precinct conventions, they have a party rule that says anyone who could have attended a precinct convention can be a delegate to the county convention.  To be eligible, you simply have to be a voter who didn't vote in another party's primary.

In presidential-election years, the state convention chooses delegates to the national conventions.  The rules of the Democratic Party in Texas dictate that the delegates be apportioned on the basis of the primary.

In Iowa, there is no presidential primary, so the precinct caucuses have been modified to serve as an equivalent process, especially for the Democrats.  Each voter who attends the precinct caucus indicates a presidential preference, and these are tallied, in effect producing a primary-like result.  The main difference is that at a caucus it takes a couple of hours to vote, and voting is public.

Delegates to the county convention are apportioned to the various factions on the basis of this tally.  After the initially tally is made, supporters of each presidential candidate gather (caucus) and select their delegates to the county convention.  I believe these delegates are required to support their candidate, at least initially at the county conventions.  There is also a process where voters can switch caucuses in case theirs doesn't have enough support to choose a delegate, or if a caucus doesn't have enough support to receive the next whole number of delegates, some of their members can switch so that another candidate can receive a delegate.