Nevada Democrats move to end presidential caucuses

[Joe Republic]

Nah, let’s keep this thread.  The other one announced that the change has already happened, which is not the case.

[Joe Republic]

The bill has been introduced to the Assembly, sponsored by the Speaker, and cosponsored by both the Majority Leader and the chairwoman of the Legislative Operations & Elections committee.  Therefore it’s virtually guaranteed to pass the Assembly.

[Joe Republic]

Please merge with this thread, and change the title to that of the other one.  Nevada is still a caucus state until AB126 passes.  It literally just got introduced yesterday.

[Joe Republic]

Some Republicans in the Senate have responded with a bill of their own that still converts the caucus to a primary, but to coincide with the regular primary election for other offices, on the second Tuesday in June.  Which is of course at the end of the presidential primary season.

I'm no fan of this arms race to be the first in the nation, but wanting to move from third or fourth position to almost last is as dumb as it gets.  The GOP is a minority in both chambers, so this bill goes nowhere anyway.  But at least they're on board with getting rid of the caucus.

[Joe Republic]

IA's caucus needs to be killed off as well after that farce about a year ago ...

Yes, we should kill off our contest because of the federal DNC meddling with our tallies. Thank you for blaming us rural hicks and our way of counting the votes for this despite the fact that the whole debacle had nothing to do with us having a caucus and not a primary.

It needs to be killed because caucuses are disporpiantly prevent low-income and disabled voters from particpating.

Not any more so than primary elections.

That just isn’t true, though.  Compare a primary election that includes early voting, mail in voting, and a full twelve hours on Election Day to show up at any time you please, with a caucus.

In 2020, 172k people showed up to the Iowa caucuses; the most spotlighted, hotly contested election on the schedule.  A month later, the similarly sized (although with fewer Democrats) Utah and Arkansas went to vote in their primaries.  ~220k voters cast a ballot.

Primaries are just better for democratic participation, and that’s an indisputable fact.

[Joe Republic]

Update:

The deadline for bills to be passed out of committee is April 9th, which is two weeks away.  Thus far, AB126 hasn’t even been scheduled for a hearing.  I’ll keep you in the loop if it does, but so far... tick tock.

[Joe Republic]

Pointlessly complicated? You stand in one corner of an elementary school gymnasium that represents the candidate you want to vote for, and if that candidate doesn't make up a large enough part of a room, you go to a different corner. It doesn't take a doctorate to understand that concept, dude.

Undemocratic? In what way? You still get to vote for your favorite candidate, with the added benefit that uninformed voters are able to learn about other candidates and what their goals are.

Imagine you're a supporter of underdog candidate Jackie Johnson, running against establishment favorite Johnny Jackson.

You show up at the caucus (because luckily you had the evening off work), and there you find you are one of thirty voters in your precinct.

It turns out that you are one of only three voters for Jackie Johnson.  The other 27 are all for Johnny Jackson.

Your next door neighbor, Brenda, is standing in the Jackson group, and is looking over at you with her arms folded and a smirk on her face.  Last week she had reminded you to take your trash cans back in the same day they get picked up, not the next day or the day after.  Brenda is a bitch.

A caucus worker approaches your small group and tells you all that unfortunately, Jackie Johnson has not reached viability in your precinct.  The three of you will either need to realign, or go home.  You really don't want to vote for Johnny Jackson, at least not in the primaries.  You have your reasons.

Worst of all, you can see across the other side of the gymnasium another neighbor (a friend of yours) who lives a couple streets away.  His house must be in a different precinct.  You can see that he is also in the Jackie Johnson group, and they actually appear to have won the precinct!  Good for them, but sucks for you!  You may as well have not shown up at all.

You hope not to bump into Brenda tomorrow.

[Joe Republic]

You still haven’t addressed the central points of caucuses’ abysmally low turnouts, and their violation of the right to a secret ballot.

Neither of those are problems.

...

Earlier in this thread, I pointed out that in 2020, the Iowa Democratic caucuses saw around 50,000 fewer voters show up than the similarly sized (and way more Republican-tilted electorate) primaries in Utah and Arkansas a month later.

How is comparatively decreased turnout not a problem to you?

Others have addressed why the principle of the secret ballot is fundamentally important already.  I'll simply share an anecdotal example of why it is important:

My mother in law has never attended a caucus in Nevada since they switched to that system in 2008.  Why?  She avidly defends her right to privacy when it comes to her vote, to the point that her own daughter (my wife) has no idea how she votes each election.  Even showing up to a Democratic caucus or a Republican caucus is itself a public declaration of one's vote.  And being married to a full-throated Fox News Republican husband, as my mother in law is, that's an uncomfortable position to be in.

[Joe Republic]

Pointlessly complicated? You stand in one corner of an elementary school gymnasium that represents the candidate you want to vote for, and if that candidate doesn't make up a large enough part of a room, you go to a different corner. It doesn't take a doctorate to understand that concept, dude.

Undemocratic? In what way? You still get to vote for your favorite candidate, with the added benefit that uninformed voters are able to learn about other candidates and what their goals are.

Imagine you're a supporter of underdog candidate Jackie Johnson, running against establishment favorite Johnny Jackson.

You show up at the caucus (because luckily you had the evening off work), and there you find you are one of thirty voters in your precinct.

It turns out that you are one of only three voters for Jackie Johnson.  The other 27 are all for Johnny Jackson.

Your next door neighbor, Brenda, is standing in the Jackson group, and is looking over at you with her arms folded and a smirk on her face.  Last week she had reminded you to take your trash cans back in the same day they get picked up, not the next day or the day after.  Brenda is a bitch.

A caucus worker approaches your small group and tells you all that unfortunately, Jackie Johnson has not reached viability in your precinct.  The three of you will either need to realign, or go home.  You really don't want to vote for Johnny Jackson, at least not in the primaries.  You have your reasons.

Worst of all, you can see across the other side of the gymnasium another neighbor (a friend of yours) who lives a couple streets away.  His house must be in a different precinct.  You can see that he is also in the Jackie Johnson group, and they actually appear to have won the precinct!  Good for them, but sucks for you!  You may as well have not shown up at all.

You hope not to bump into Brenda tomorrow.

So? None of this is an indictment of the caucus process. Jackie would've lost anyways, and so the system is irrelevant in terms of the actual number.

So your vote for Jackie Johnson gets thrown in the trash, but your neighbor from a few streets away has his counted?  And that's a-ok?

(Note: this argument can also apply to the Electoral College, which is fine with me.)

[Joe Republic]

Update:

The deadline for bills to be passed out of committee is April 9th, which is two weeks away.  Thus far, AB126 hasn’t even been scheduled for a hearing.  I’ll keep you in the loop if it does, but so far... tick tock.

Further update:

I spoke with the Chair of the Legislative Operations & Elections committee earlier this afternoon, and AB126 is still very much on the radar.  It's more a matter of when it will be heard, rather than if, and the next two weeks are going to be pretty hectic.

[Joe Republic]

My mother in law has never attended a caucus in Nevada since they switched to that system in 2008.  Why?  She avidly defends her right to privacy when it comes to her vote, to the point that her own daughter (my wife) has no idea how she votes each election.  Even showing up to a Democratic caucus or a Republican caucus is itself a public declaration of one's vote.  And being married to a full-throated Fox News Republican husband, as my mother in law is, that's an uncomfortable position to be in.

I'll repeat what I said earlier, if you don't care enough about what you believe in to stand up for it, then you're probably not the kind of person who should vote anyways.

You heard about the woman in Texas whose parents threw her out of their house for voting for Biden?  She made the choice to declare her vote, as is also her right.  But what if she actually didn't want to piss off her parents, and let's say this had been in an Iowa caucus scenario?  I guess you'd have to make the choice between exercising your democratic right, or becoming homeless, amirite?

[Joe Republic]

You heard about the woman in Texas whose parents threw her out of their house for voting for Biden?  She made the choice to declare her vote, as is also her right.  But what if she actually didn't want to piss off her parents, and let's say this had been in an Iowa caucus scenario?  I guess you'd have to make the choice between exercising your democratic right, or becoming homeless, amirite?

See my response to Mikado.

So... the solution is to... pass a law that bans parents from kicking out their adult children from home for voting the wrong way...?

Or, get rid of the non-secret ballot instead, as has been the trend in almost every free and fair democracy for about two centuries.  (That’s part of what makes it "free and fair" of course.)

[Joe Republic]

AB 126 has been scheduled for a hearing on Thursday at 4pm.

However, the deadline to pass it out of committee is the next day, and I haven’t heard if they plan to vote on it.  (The Leg Ops committee doesn’t *usually* meet on Fridays, and the rules state you can’t vote on it the same day it’s heard.)

[Joe Republic]

The bill passed out of committee along party lines.  It now has until Tuesday the 20th to pass the Assembly.  It’s likely it’ll get held up in Ways & Means due to the fiscal impact (estimated $5 million cost for a state-run primary separate from the regular primary later in the season).

[Joe Republic]

The GOP had came out strongly against it (even though they supported ending the caucus in 2012), but in the end it earned 5 of 16 Republican votes in the Assembly, and 3 of 9 votes in the Senate.  I guess that makes it count as bipartisan?

During the bill hearings, the question was asked about how it would conflict with New Hampshire.  Speaker Jason Frierson, who sponsored the bill, responded that he's not trying to interfere with or supersede legislation in another state.  What this bill does is simply "make the case" for Nevada to go first.

It's worth noting that this bill specifies a date for the Nevada primary (the first Tuesday in February).  New Hampshire's law does not specify a date, only that it must take place a week before any other state has their primary.  So both national parties don't really have to say or do anything at all, and the traditional order resets itself automatically.  Remember that the 2008 NH primary took place on January 8th!

Honestly I don't much care about the "me first! me first!" horse race.  I'm just happy that the dumb caucus system is dead here.

[Joe Republic]

Could be the early states end up IA-NH-NV-SC on the GOP and NH-NV-SC on the Dem side.

it's worth noting that unless the DNC changes their delegate allocation formula in the 2024 Call to Convention, each state will lose all their delegates if their presidential nominating contest is held before the following dates:

Iowa: February 5th
New Hampshire: February 13th
Nevada: February 24th
South Carolina: March 2nd
all other states: March 5th

I suspect that this ultimately ends up being an empty threat.  Remember in 2008 when Michigan and Florida both went "too early" and initially lost all their delegates.  Then they compromised and allowed all the delegates to be seated but with only half a vote each.  Then finally, in the middle of the convention during the warm fuzzy glow of Obama-Clinton unity after a bitterly divided campaign, the delegates were granted their full voting rights after all.  The threats ended up being a total bluff.

[Joe Republic]

Nevada is the state that makes the least sense to choose our president. Low levels of political and community involvement, high levels of transience, and difficult geography really render this an odd move. New Hampshire and Iowa at least have a history of paying attention to politics and seem to comprehend the high responsibility we randomly have thrust upon them.

But now that I think of it, a state where almost everyone lives in a sad exurban-type development or a trailer in the middle of nowhere probably represents the future of this country.

There is an insultingly dismissive description for literally every state in the union, including why it doesn't "deserve" to have any particular precedence over any other.  Yours for Nevada is not original.

[Joe Republic]

Nevada is the state that makes the least sense to choose our president. Low levels of political and community involvement, high levels of transience, and difficult geography really render this an odd move. New Hampshire and Iowa at least have a history of paying attention to politics and seem to comprehend the high responsibility we randomly have thrust upon them.

But now that I think of it, a state where almost everyone lives in a sad exurban-type development or a trailer in the middle of nowhere probably represents the future of this country.

There is an insultingly dismissive description for literally every state in the union, including why it doesn't "deserve" to have any particular precedence over any other.  Yours for Nevada is not original.

Then I’m glad others agree with my observations about Nevada’s lack of civic culture.

Having worked in the heart of Nevada's government for an entire legislative session, interacting with literally thousands of deeply passionate and motivated citizens, I can confirm that you have no idea what you're talking about.

[Joe Republic]

I don’t view the 2008 example that way.  States moving their primaries earlier do so in order to actually influence the outcome of the overall primary race or at least to make the candidates believe they *might* influence the overall primary race, and so campaign in their state and pander to them.

Yes, that's exactly why Iowa and New Hampshire were "forced" (by themselves) to go so early; because other states had attempted to leapfrog in front for the exact reason you describe.  Same reason why Nevada has done it now.

I don’t remember the details of the sanctions from the DNC in 2008, but I believe that in addition to stripping away the delegates from the respective states, there were sanctions on individual candidates that they would suffer if they campaigned in states that broke the rules.  This was enough to deter all the candidates from campaigning in both Florida and Michigan, and there was no meaningfully contested primary in either state.

That's not an accurate recollection of what happened.  There was no penalty for any of the candidates who stayed in the MI and FL primaries.  Nearly all the candidates dropped out, in deference of the national party's rules.  Hillary Clinton, notably, stayed on the Michigan ballot even when all her other major opponents withdrew.

When delegates were later restored to both states, it was only done so knowing that it wouldn’t be enough to prevent Obama from winning the nomination.  That’s like retroactively adding 5 points to the score of a basketball team that lost the game by 10 points.  Who cares if it has no chance of changing the outcome?  In terms of preventing the offending states from either influencing the outcome of the nominating contest or getting the candidates to campaign there and cater to them, the sanctions were extraordinarily successful.

Yes, that's not really disagreeing with me, other than perhaps the way the timeline of events had influenced the rationale to reinstate the delegates' full voting rights.  Obama had already clinched the nomination, and Clinton had conceded and endorsed him a month and a half prior to the convention.  The reinstatement was, by that point, a goodwill gesture to ease any remaining tensions (in two big swing states) after a long and bitter campaign.

The long term problem for the DNC with that decision was that it showed any future rule-breaking states (such as... Nevada?) that any threats to strip their delegates are probably completely toothless.  It also showed the same to any future candidates considering withdrawing as well.

[Joe Republic]

Sisolak signed the bill into law today.  RIH, caucus!

The 2024 Nevada presidential primary will be on Tuesday February 6th.  Which would likely put New Hampshire's primary on or before January 30th.