Commentary: Evan Smith - thoughts on the Iowa caucuses

By Evan Smith
Contributing Writer

As I write this, people are gathering for presidential caucuses in Iowa. It reminds me of attending a caucus in Shoreline seven and a half years ago.

I went to my neighborhood Democratic caucus in 2004.

People signed in as supporters of Howard Dean, John Kerry and Dennis Kucinich. I signed in as “uncommitted.“

I came away with three negative opinions:

• The attendance was unrepresentative; thirteen people attended from my precinct, a precinct that usually has more than a hundred Democratic voters.
• There was no discussion, either about the candidates or anything else; everyone stayed with the candidates that they came in supporting; one woman wanted to discuss the Party’s stand on the blanket primary, an issue that was then current, but everyone wanted to choose delegates for their candidates and get out.
• Everyone who signed in got on Democratic lists; my son and I have been getting Party mail for seven and a half years.

We know that a primary allows more participation and more privacy, but we also know that it costs money that the State doesn’t have, So, in presidential years, let’s move our State primary to June, include a section on which voters would declare a private-choice party preference for the section that includes the presidential primary and require parties to choose at least 85 percent of their delegates through the primary system or lose major-party status.