The Iowa Caucuses and how they work
January 15, 2024
Today is the day where the voters finally go to the polls to tell the media what they’ve gotten wrong for the last year…or what they got right.
Iowa has held the #1 spot every 4 years to kick off the Presidential campaign since 1976. This year, it’s happening during a massive winter storm. That may skew the results somewhat, but we’ll see. So, what is a caucus and how does it work?
For some reason, the democrats decided to not participate this year. Your guess is as good as mine. A caucus is a political party sponsored event and it is staffed with volunteers and party officials, not election officials. Caucuses are an actual event, held at a certain time, and place. With very few exceptions, you must show up at 8:00 pm EST tonight to participate.
In the Iowa caucus, the participants are only selecting their choice for POTUS, with a secret ballot. Whichever candidate garners the most votes, the national delegates are bound to cast their Electoral College votes for that person. In Iowa, there are around 750,000 registered republicans that are eligible to participate tonight. But, Iowa law allows all registered voters, such as democrats and independents, to change their party affiliation on the night of the caucus.
There’s been a lot of speculation that a large number of registered democrats would change their affiliation for one night and vote for Nikki Haley. The winter storm will probably keep a lot of those unenthusiastic voters from following through with their plan.
So what is the DNC doing in Iowa this year? They are doing a mail-in primary ballot on March 5th. Nothing shady about that after the last couple of election cycle debacle, is there? I’ll bet money Joe Biden wins.
So, when will we know the results? The caucuses start 8 Eastern Time and should take about an hour. There are about 1,600 caucus precincts and the smaller ones should report within the hour. The larger one will probably take a couple of hours. There will be plenty of places online to find the results in real-time.
I hope that helps. Send a prayer for safety to all the Iowa republicans participating tonight, and include all of the democrats changing their affiliation to try to negatively affect the results as well.
© Copyright Chuck Koehler/Koehler’s Khronicles 2024