With news that the winner of the Iowa Caucuses will never be truly known, we ought to revisit the hype that surrounds the Caucuses. The nominating process is a battle for delegates, and any candidate who can win the majority of the delegates at the National Republican Convention can assure that they’ll win a nominating vote. Different states have different rules for allocating delegates, but Iowa’s rules are incredibly labyrinthine. Sources conflict on exactly how it works, but it’s important to remember two things. First, the delegates are not elected on election night, but later on during a complicated series of county, congressional district, and state conventions. Second, none of these delegates are actually pledged to vote for any particular candidate at the Convention.
What this means is that any delegates Rick Santorum may have thought he won in Iowa will probably be Romney delegates by the time we get to the Convention. Or, if they aren’t Romney delegates, they’ll be delegates for whomever the party is nominating for president. For this reason, it’s really not very important who won the Iowa Caucuses, at least not for determining the delegate count. This January 4th Associated Press piece attempted to explain the results of the Iowa Caucuses:
Iowa’s delegates to the national convention are not bound by the results of the caucuses. But an Associated Press analysis showed Romney would win 13 and Santorum would win 12, if there were no changes in their support as the campaign wears on.
Twenty-five delegates were at stake in the caucuses. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas came in third in the voting but was shut out of delegates because he didn’t win any of Iowa’s four congressional districts.
Romney and Santorum each won two congressional districts, and Romney was the statewide winner by a mere eight votes, according to final results announced early Wednesday by the Iowa GOP.
So, the Associated Press reported that Ron Paul would be shut out. But Business Insider reported something quite different:
Ron Paul may have officially come in third tonight, but if the campaign’s caucus strategy went off as planned, then Paul may actually be the real winner of the first Republican voting contest.
That’s because Paul’s massive organizational push in Iowa focused on both winning votes, and also on making sure that Paul supporters stuck around after the vote to make sure they were selected as county delegates — the first step towards being elected as a delegate to the Republican National Convention.
That’s because Iowa’s Republican caucuses are non-binding — they are technically just a straw poll, so once selected, delegates are free to vote for whichever presidential candidate they choose.
“Part of what we’ve been training the Ron Paul people to do is not to leave after the vote,” Dan Godzich, a senior campaign advisor, told BI. “Stay and get elected to the conventions and get us those delegates.”
Which source is correct? Remember, these delegates are not pledged to anyone. If you show up to cast your vote but leave before the officials are elected, you haven’t really cast a vote at all. If all the Romney people leave and all the Ron Paul people stay, they can nominate their own delegate to the county party even though they lost the first vote.
Then, as if this wasn’t murky enough, it seems that few GOP officials actually followed the proper procedures for reporting the vote on Caucus Night.
The precinct chair and precinct secretary were both to sign the results verified by witnesses on caucus night. But results for some precincts came in on pieces of paper other than the official forms. Many more had only one signature, or the wrong signature (say, from a county chair). Another 18 documents had no signatures at all.
And, in the end, eight precincts will never have their numbers certified at all.
Results from eight precincts are missing — any of which could hold an advantage for Mitt Romney — and will never be recovered and certified, Republican Party of Iowa officials told The Des Moines Register on Wednesday.
GOP officials discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts, although not all the changes affected the two leaders. Changes in one precinct alone shifted the vote by 50 — a margin greater than the certified tally.
The certified numbers: 29,839 for Santorum and 29,805 for Romney. The turnout: 121,503.
The dirty secret is that is doesn’t matter who won the Caucuses because the Caucuses don’t matter for the purposes of the delegate count. They are not much different from the Ames Straw Poll. If you go back and look at how Iowa has voted at the GOP convention, you’ll probably find no more correlation to the Caucuses than to the Straw Poll.
Rick Santorum may have won the most votes on January 3rd, but if he wants any votes at the convention from Iowans, he’s going to have to win in enough other states to keep his delegates pledged to him. And, for all we know, half his delegates to the county conventions are really Paulistas.
Smell the democracy!
