John Deeth Blog

I never said the blog was dead. It's only semi-retired, and I have always reserved the right to don the beret as needed for special occasions. So on this Easter Monday the blog rises from the grave.

It's been a long Iowa caucus tradition that the two parties set aside their policy differences and work together on process issues. It's also been a long tradition that the parties don't tell each other how to conduct their own business.  You want to have a straw poll and call it a caucus? Fine. You do you. We'll be over here counting our preference groups.

That tradition has been stained to the breaking point in the months since the two national party committees made different decisions about Iowa's traditional First role - the Republicans keeping Iowa first, the Democrats completely banishing Iowa from the early state window.

This week, that bipartisan tradition snapped entirely. The final break was House Study Bill 245, a late session surprise from Rep. Bobby Kaufmann - a Trump campaign advisor and the son of the state party chair. Given the prominence of the sponsor, the unusual method of introduction, and the late date, I'm assuming this will pass.

The bill makes two key changes in caucus process. The first change ends the long bipartisan tradition that Iowas can register to vote or change party on caucus night. The bill would instead require voters to choose and register with the party 70 days before the caucuses.

It's clear what's at play here. The Trump wing of the Republican Party of Iowa is worried about anti-Trump Democrats and no party voters crossing over. But guess what? Crossovers happened EVERY time there's a caucus in a re-election cycle, as independents go where the action is. 

But if Iowa Republicans suddenly see that as a problem, they can change their process without changing the law. They can simply make the 70 day requirement a party rule. Is that mean spirited and vote suppression? Sure, but it's their party event and thus their business. You set your rules, and let us keep our doors open to people who want to join the Democrats on caucus night.

The other change would lock the caucuses into the status quo of 2012 and earlier by requiring caucus voters to attend the precinct level caucus in person. 

This is designed to kill the Iowa Democratic Party's plan to separate the presidential vote from the caucus itself, and conduct a by mail presidential preference process. It would also kill the satellite caucuses that were attempted in 2020 and on a very small scale in 2016 - even though most of those were at the same time as the precinct caucuses. There were serious flaws and inconsistencies to the satellite caucuses, but they did open up the process to some people who could not attend.

Even the Republicans had a very limited caucus participation program for military and overseas voters. I look forward to the Kaufmanns explaining to our troops why they can't vote.

Republicans may be concerned that the New Hampshire Secretary of State will call the Democratic mail-in process an "election" and move New Hampshire's date in front of Iowa. They are also worried that people might vote a Democratic absentee ballot, then attend a GOP caucus.  

That seems to be an exaggerated fear for this cycle, since the Democratic nomination is not likely to be seriously contested. No one's going to want a Democratic mailed ballot except the committed party activists and the leftists who want to cast an anti-Biden protest vote. Neither group is likely to show up at a Republican caucus. The people who might be inclined to monkeywrench the Republican process are the same people who care about being on the county central committee or about getting their platform resolution passed.

Going forward, if  there even is a going forward, double caucusing is legitimate concern and a challenging problem. But it should addressed by the two parties working together and finding an answer that works for both of their processes.

You know what system works to allow absentee voting and prevent people from participating in both parties process? A state run primary election.

But that's clearly not going to happen - even Democrats didn't introduce a for-show bill - and this bill clearly is. So what do Democrats do?

The Republicans clearly want us to run our caucuses just as we did in 2012 and earlier (with the elimination of the questionable "improvement" of the satellite caucuses, and the addition of the early party registration requirement). That is the absolute last thing we should do, for all the reasons of disproportionate representation and inaccessibility and exclusion that I have talked about for years.  (Granted, the overcrowding would not be as bad in a re-election year.)

That gets us in even more trouble with the DNC than we're already in. First off, the sitting Democratic president and presumptive nominee has directly said "Our party should no longer allow caucuses as part of our nominating process." Second, we are likely going to be dragged along by the Republicans into holding our caucus on a date that does not comply with the DNC calendar. Eliminating the mail-in vote would break yet another rule - the requirement that caucus states have an absentee process. It seems increasingly unlikely that Iowa's national delegation will be seated at the Chicago convention. 

Making Iowa Democrats look bad is not the GOP's main motivation here - I'm convinced this has more to do with internal Republican politics - but it's a nice bonus.

As I outlined in December, it was possible for the Iowa Democratic Party to both comply with state law and still follow the DNC calendar rules. State law does not say that we have to vote for president before any other state. It simply says that we need to hold a caucus and elect precinct level party officers before other states vote for president, The law does not require a presidential vote at the caucus - and I see nothing in HSB 275 that changes that.

Iowa's original plan, as presented by then-chair Ross Wilburn to the DNC Rules And Bylaws Committee last August, was to conduct a mail in presidential vote in the weeks before the caucus night meeting, announce the results on caucus night, and then conduct the legally required party business at the caucus. My proposed variation on that would be to have the caucus meeting, but then hold the mail in vote later, at a calendar compliant date.

Maybe such a vote in March of 2024, or a straw vote at a county convention, could be called something other than a caucus and used to allocate the national delegates. Or maybe it can't.

Another piece of bipartisan cooperation has fallen by the wayside. It's a lousy trick to blindside Democrats this late in the session. 

Iowa Democrats were blindsided by our own national party in 2019. In order to address the new requirement of an absentee caucus system, we spent months planning a phone-in "virtual caucus" system - only to be told with no warning just four months before the caucuses that it was unacceptable.

Now we're getting blindsided by our fellow Iowans - who used to be our allies on caucus issues.

If the Republican position was always going to be "Democrats doing a vote by mail caucus is unacceptable" - and I'm pretty sure that was the case - they should have signaled that ASAP. We should have know that before Wilburn even presented the idea to Rules And Bylaws. Months of planning time have been lost.

Also lost are all the benefits Iowa Democrats used to gain from first. Now we're boxed into a position where we will have to scramble just to comply with state law and have a meeting, and where the biggest win we can hope for is getting seated at the national convention with hotels closer to the United Center than to Davenport.

A couple years ago I raised the idea that Iowa Democrats may have no presidential nomination process at all - that our caucus process would be prohibited and that at some point the state party leaders would quietly choose a delegation. The first part of that has already happened. It's looking increasingly likely that rank and file Iowa Democrats will never get any chance to express their personal presidential nomination preference.