ok it’s late. would you like me to explain the Nevada caucus
It works like Iowa with some crucial differences. Voters assemble at precinct caucuses and pick their candidate. This is the initial count. If their candidate doesn’t meet the viability threshhold (usually 15%) they can realign to viable candidate. This is the final count.
The final count determines how many county-level delegates each candidate gets. This total — and not the popular vote — will be used by the media to determine who “won” the Nevada caucus. Like the SDEs (Sucking Dick Experts) in Iowa.
(Side note: Iowa also has county level delegates and they could just report them instead of the SDEs since those totals are basically proportional, but they don’t, possibly because they’re assholes.)
Like in Iowa the county-level delegates are weighted towards rural areas. In the most sparsely populated counties, 5 voters earn 1 delegate. In Las Vegas, 50 voters earn 1 delegate. Kind of like in the electoral college, it’s possible for someone to get fewer votes but win.
The county-level delegates vote for state convention delegates who vote for the national convention pledged delegates who pick the nominee in Milwaukee.
There’s another 15% threshhold statewide and by Congressional district that candidates must meet to be eligible for these.
There’s another 15% threshhold statewide and by Congressional district that candidates must meet to be eligible for these.
Okay whatever that’s the basics of it. Here’s the fucked up parts
NV has early voting for the first time. 75,000 people cast an early ballot. To put that in context, 84,000 caucused in 2016 total.
Each ballot has a first choice and two ranked second choices for realignment. The Nevada Democratic Party has until Saturday morning to count all 75,000 ballots and transmit the results to over 2000 precinct caucus locations. If they fail at this there is no caucus.
The Nevada Democrats do not have the infrastructure to do this. I don’t think theres any precedent for a state party managing such a gargantuan task. They have been pulling in national party workers by the score just to get it done in time. They’re up right now while I’m drinking
I think they’ll get it done. But then every single precinct chair has to correctly use these early ballots to tabulate the initial count and realignment. And campaigns can challenge rejected early votes. The entire process will be riddled with errors in the way Iowa was.
The other thing is there are satellite caucuses called strip caucuses. It’s good in the abstract: strip workers with shifts on Saturday morning can go caucus and get paid. But it’s also shady as hell. If you want to go to a strip caucus you have to ask your manager or union rep.
The dust-up with the Culinary Union notwithstanding, Bernie stands to clean up in the strip caucuses, and we’ve met dozens of canvassers hanging around the strip just to get workers to come. A lot of the workers aren’t even aware they have this option.
One more note: there will be problems with transmitting the data from 2000 caucus locations to the NVDP, but my guess is Iowa put the fear of God in them, and they’ll try their hardest to get some sort of results in today.
That’s your stupid caucus, it shouldn’t exist and probably won’t after this year. The Chapo Trap House Elections Unit will be very sober and waking up at a reasonable hour and reporting from a caucus site on the Las Vegas Strip. My final calls will come before noon Pacific.
