By Haleigh Ehmsen-
Iowa’s caucuses have been the first step in the modern presidential election system since 1972. Some students have participated in this year’s caucuses in hopes of voicing their opinion.
A caucus is open to any registered voter who wants to voice or support their opinion in electing the future president. Seventeen year-olds are allowed to caucus too, if they will be 18 by the election date.
Iowa’s 1,874 precincts each have a place where a caucus is held. A caucus begins with voters dividing into groups by the candidate they want to vote for. All undecided voters form a group and listen to the other groups vouch for their respective candidate. After all debating is over the number of voters in each group are counted. The number of delegates each candidate has won is calculated.
Iowa caucuses are not electing the candidates, but rather are electing delegates to the county conventions. Delegates at county conventions elect delegates to the district and state conventions, where the national convention delegates are selected. Twenty-five percent of total voters present must vote for a candidate for the candidate to earn delegates.
Senior Paige Ford attended the caucus for her district on Jan. 3, at the Mount Vernon Middle School. Paige, 18, was excited about being involved in the caucus. She found it interesting to listen to community members talk about their opinions and see a different point of view. She caucused for Mitt Romney, “[I] may not agree with everything but he’s the most electable and I’d be fighting a losing battle picking some other candidate,” Paige said.
Senior Hannah Hall, 18, was disappointed with her caucus experience. Her caucus location wasn’t what she expected at Antioch church and she thought it was very unorganized. Despite her disappointment, she voted for Ron Paul. “I really like some of the things he’s refused to sign and what he has said,” said Hannah. She likes his idea of getting rid of the department of education so education could be more state run.
Jake Timm, also a senior, was unable to caucus because he had a basketball game that night, but he would have caucused for Ron Paul if he could have. Jake said, “I like his background. He doesn’t have as much baggage as other candidates.”
None of the students caucused for Rick Perry but responded to his statement, “This is a quirky process and a quirky place to say the least. We’re going to go into places that have actual primaries and there are going to be real republicans.”
Jake said, “Obviously Rick Perry –based on his commercials, public speaking skills and stances on issues- does not understand politics in America.” Paige thought that Perry’s statement was inaccurate and represented hard feelings about his showing at the Iowa caucuses. Hannah said that she thought it showed Perry’s narrow-mindedness.
While several students said they didn’t think that Iowa was representative of the country as a whole, they also didn’t really see significance to the first state that holds a caucus or primaries and didn’t deem Iowa worthy of Perry’s “quirky” statement. Jake said, “It doesn’t really matter who goes first.”
