Who is Caucusing tonight?

[isawlogs]

Thanks Norm ,

   I'll be back with another question or two .  ;D

[Mooseherder]

    I am trying hard here to understand the process of how you elect your President , in no way do I want to judge how it is done , only want to understand , that could take a spell  ;D So be gentle with me .  ;D

Okay, But you asked for it. :D ;D
It's mostly a gut feeling, but we wait for a Famous celebrity, actor or Singer to tell who to vote for.
Then we consider who is most likely to not end up on Dancing with the Stars. :
We watch on where they stand on the issues like should there be a million dollar Woodstock Concert Museum. :D
Then we sort it all out and eliminate the ones who have seen the small triangular hover crafts. ;D
Make notice on whomever looks best in Flip-Flops and also who is the best Duck Hunter. ;)
And another consideration is who has the widest stance in restroom stall #3.
Who has the best 400 dollar haircut.
Sort out all the estranged cousins who are less likely to flunk a High Schools civics test.   THEN.......Chose the one we dislike the least.

After all that, we go through post election selection trauma. :D

[Haytrader]

Somthing else here takes place Marcel. (that is if I got it right)

You have to be a registered voter to vote anytime.
You register either Repubublican, Democrat, or Independent.
At the caucases you can only vote for canditates that are running in that party.
Once each party has thier national convention and selects the canditate to represent that party, then we move on to the Presidential election.
In the Presidential election, a registered voter can vote for the candidate of thier choice, no matter what party.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

[isawlogs]

 Oh ya , da mud puddle is clearing up some . I am still coagitating all of this .

  Thanks .  ;) :P :P :P

   Quite amazine how somethings that are so much alike be so different .  :P

[Ron Wenrich]

Norm's explanation is pretty good as to the general process.  What seems to be confusing is how the primary is run.  The states are the ones that set the rules as to who can vote and at what time.

The president is the only nationwide elected official.  So, it doesn't matter which state he or she is from, they can run in the primary if they get enough signatures from registered voters to get on a ballot.  Again, the state decides how many signatures you need.  So, a potential candidate may qualify in one state, but not another. 

Other offices, such as senator or representative must reside in that district in order to run.

Some states have open primaries.  That's where you can vote for any political party that you want, but only one (I think).  Other states have closed primaries where you can only vote in the party that you are registered.  I'm an independent, and my state thinks I shouldn't be allowed to vote in primaries. 

Residency is another tricky matter.  You can't be registered in more than one voting district.  If you aren't going to be available to vote, you can send in an absentee ballot.  That's how citizens living in other countries and some of the shut ins vote.  I did it once when I was working out of the area. 

Minor parties often just have a convention and nominate a candidate that way.  They don't have primary elections.  Usually, if a candidate for a minor party can get enough signatures to get on the general ballot, the party will rubber stamp it.  They don't get much money and they're pretty well shunned by the other parties (who control the elections).  They make the signature thing so stringent for other parties that they are often difficult to fill.  For example, this past year our Republican and Democratic candidates for governor only needed 5,000 signatures to be placed on the ballot.  An independent tried to run but needed 62,500 signatures.  Not quite a level playing field.

States also can set whatever date they want for their primary elections.  That's why Iowa has theirs early, and states like Florida and Pennsylvania end up with primarys where the election is a foregone conclusion.   Primaries are where the parties elect delegates.  They don't have to vote for whoever wins the most votes.  Lots of backroom dealings, and you can see states that will split their votes.   Sometimes the candidate with the most votes doesn't get the nomination.

Then comes the general election.  The general election is always on the same day, nationwide.  Again, the candidate is trying to win delegate votes.  Each state is assigned a certain amount of delegates, it being the number of senators and represenatatives each state has.  The candidate that wins a state gets that number of delegates.  Again, the delegates need not vote how the state goes, but they have traditionally done so. 

So, by using the delegate method (representative democracy in action), a candidate can win the most votes and still not be elected president.  They can carry the most states and still not be elected president.

Long post, but maybe that makes it muddy again.   :D

[beenthere]

.........

 Beenthere , I read and re-read Patty's post , had it been clear as you say I would not have asked for further explanations on the hows of the elections . It was clear on what the caucus did and how they did it , but did not explain the election process in itself , that could of been my fault on maybe the way my question was drawn up or writen, I have yet to master my writings , I am though , working on it .

................. 

isawlogs
I understand your question now, just at the moment I didn't know if you'd seen Patty's post (which was clear to me). I commend you for working hard to figure it out....many here in this country don't understand it near as well as you do.  (and not referring to anyone making good explanations of the procedures in this thread  )

After picking the candidate for President and Vice President at the National Conventions, the election takes place.
(then along the lines Ron Wenrich was explaining)
The Electoral College elects the next President, based on the 538 President Electors casting their votes, which are based upon the popular vote within the States.
That is a brief (simple) explanation of a system that prevents the heavily populated areas from controlling the votes in an election. I think it is a smart system, but many do not.

[isawlogs]

Thank you to all for taking time to help clear this up for me . Knowing this it will be easier to follow and understand to way things go from here on in .
  Like I have said before , I will not judge the system , it does sound like a good one , might be in need of a little tweek here and there  ;D That is up to those directly involve to do the tweeking  ;) 

   Again thanks for bearing with me on this one  ;) 8) 8)

[asy]

Asy, I believe you have to be a registered voter...

Thanks Jeff!!!

And another consideration is who has the widest stance in restroom stall #3.

Thanks for the great explanation Moosey! 

Must say, though, I really REALLY hope Hillary doesn't win the above consideration!!! (or maybe that she does... : )

Now, with regard to the Presidential Election, I sorta understand how the DNC and RNC choose their party representative (Thanks again, West Wing), but, what about independents? Who chooses which one of them 'runs' for president? Do they have a convention of their own, or can as many of them as can fund a run to the presidency be involved in the final election? Perhaps this is a question for Ron as he's said he's registered independent...?

asy :D



Note for Marcel:  (everyone else can stop reading now if they like)

I have yet to master my writings , I am though , working on it .

Just a little note with regard to the above sentence.

You have a few options as to how it is written correctly, here they are:

• I have yet to master my writing, though I am working on it.


• Though I have yet to master my writing, I am working on it.


• I have yet to master my writing, I am, though, working on it.

The way you've written it isn't correct. The way I "test drive" sentences with commas in them is that you should pretty much be able to take a phrase within a sentence and remove the part within the commas and it should still make sense.

For example, in my final example, you can remove the word 'though' and it still makes sense thus: "I have yet to master my writing, I am working on it."

See???   

[isawlogs]

Asy ,

Thank you ,  I am still working on spelling 101 , ponctuation is to begin next term .  ;D

   

   PS  Am I right to think that the two larger parties are also to richess ones . That the independent would (be)* , in most cases , have less money involved around him.

   How do they decide how many votes one needs to be able to continue ???
This is talking about an indepedent getting into the race . 

    * edit  ;)
   

[Faron]

Isawlogs,  What generally happens is that when sources of funding for a candidate dry up, due to an ability to attract votes in the primaries, the candidate decides to give up the attempt.  There is no mandate or law to quit, but at some point the candidate realizes he has no choice.

[Gary_C]

I did get a chance to talk to my son today. He and his wife attended the Democrats caucus in Iowa this week and was supporting Richardson. There was a large crowd (over 200) for a small town and it was clear from the start that Obama had the most supporters and the youngest group.

The Richardson group did not have the required 15 percent so there were not "viable" according to the democrats rules. They were only three short so after doing some calculating, they went to the leader of the Obama group and suggested they send three people to the Richardson group which would not affect them and would result in taking one delegate away from Hillary who was in third place. He said they could not understand the idea at all, so they gave up.  They also tried the same with Edwards who was in second place and they could not grasp the idea either.

Then as they were waiting for the alloted time for swaping to end, one of the young Obama supporters came over to try to get the Richardson supporters to join the Obama group. He made a pitch to them and said "clearly Obama is the most dynamic person running for president." But my son told him that it would be fine if they were looking for a new Baptist Minister, but instead they were looking for someone to run our country!  ;D

So after the time ran out for the "not viable" candidates, their supporters could either join another group or just leave. Not sure what he did, but may have joined the Edwards group.

Some of the candidates may just stick with the campaigning to be considered for the Vice President's nomination. Richardson is part Hispanic so he may be a good minority addition to a ticket, but probably not Obama's.

[Patty]

This is such an interesting discussion.

One mantra in the USA is: Follow the Money.   

Marcel asked about this in an earlier post.  I am not exactly sure how this works now that we have a law in place that inhibits folks from contributing to their choice candidate (McCain-Feingold Law) but it used to be that folks and corporations and anybody who wanted to could send money to their favorite candidate to help bankroll his win. You could also give money to your favorite party and let the party use it to further your ideals.

Folks in this country tend to have different beliefs in what the roll of government should be. Some just want the government to defend the populous from the enemy and play no more role than that. Others believe the government should create equality for all men through manipulation. And still others believe the government should be somewhere in between these two ideals.

To further our desire for the "correct" government or leader, we send them money. Human nature is that folks want to follow and support a winner, not a loser, so when a candidate doesn't do well and is perceived as a loser, his funding dries up because folks have turned to the winner instead. When a candidate has no money he drops out of the race.

Some candidates are extremely rich, and use their own money in addition to other people's money to run. I read yesterday that Mitt Romney has already spent $17 million of his own money to keep his campaign afloat. This kind of explains why most of our presidential candidates are wealthy individuals. It is certainly not a requirement, but it does help to keep the campaign afloat until folks hear your message and hopefully start to send you their money in support.

Often times "normal" folks (as in not megamillionaires) just cannot get their message out to the public to gain support before the bills overwhelm them. Campaigning is very expensive. I know that somehow the campaigns are financed through the current government, with matching funds and all....but I certainly do not pretend to understand that part of the election cycle. Perhaps someone else knows about this end of it.

[Ron Wenrich]

I found this in today's paper. There are caucuses in a number of states.  Iowa's was the first, but the Wyoming Republicans had there's this past Thursday.

States that have a caucus are:  Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Nevada, Montana (Repulicans only), Wyoming, Colorado, North Dakota, Nebraska (Democrats only), Kansas, Minnesota, Iowa, West Virginia (Republicans only), and Maine. 

Interesting to note that the dates that both parties have a caucus are not necessarily the same.  In Wyoming, the Republicans have already met, but the Democrats have to wait until March 8.

Also, not all primaries are on the same date.  A big push is on for South Carolina.  The Republican primary is held on Jan 19, while the Democratic primary is held on Jan 26.

[DanG]

You seem to have a pretty good understanding of the process, Patty.  You bring up a point or two that I'd like to expand on.

The first is the motivation of contributors to let go of their money for the sake of a political campaign.  Now, I'm sure that there are some, perhaps many, who would expect special favors from someone they helped to elect, but I don't think that is the prevelant attitude.  Mostly, I think, they just want to create a political climate that would be advantageous to them.  The business people almost always vote Republican because that party understands The First Political Law of DanG, and the other party does not.  That law states, "If the big man ain't makin' money, the little man ain't eatin'."  Big businessmen and small businessmen alike, subscribe to that thought because fiscal liberalism chokes them to death and makes it impossible for them to provide jobs for American workers.

I also have thoughts(Surprise! :D ) about the need for candidates to have a personal bankroll in order to launch a campaign.  Now, we could easily just have the Gov't fund all campaigns, but then we would have every lunatic hairball in the Country running for office, and we would never be able to sort through them.  As it is, we only have the rich lunatic hairballs to worry about, and it only takes about a billion bucks and a year of our time to get through it.  Also, if a person hasn't been able to scrape up a decent bank account for himself, what makes us think he could lead the Country?

Getting back to the Caucus question, unless I missed it nobody has actually defined the term.  "Caucus" is an Indian(the feather kind of Indian, rather than the dot kind of Indian ;) ) word that mean's "Tribal Meeting."  The term has been used in Congress and in State Legislatures for many years to describe meetings that are exclusive to members of a certain party.  As far as I know, it has only been used to describe this type of election process for the past 40 years or so.

[Faron]

DanG, Every office holder and federal employee ought to required to have your law stamped permanently on their foreheads in reverse so that is the first thing they see in the morning. 8)

[isawlogs]

   I would like to thank all of you for making this thread such a pleasure to read , and so much interesting for those of us that had little knowledge of how things are done in your country .

  Merçi
         Marcel   :P :P :P       

[Brucer]

Speaking as an outsider looking in, this year's campaign already seemed to be a lot more interesting than usual. It occured to me that I couldn't remember there ever being a US election when there wasn't either an incumbent president or an incumbent vice president seeking his party's nomination. So I checked. No wonder I couldn't remember -- it hasn't happened for 80 years ;D.

Another interesting bit of trivia. Republican rules say that Republicans aren't supposed to hold a primary or caucaus before Feb 5 (when some 20 states have primaries). So the Wyoming Republicans broke the rules when they held their primary last week. And they got penalized for that -- they're only allowed half their usual number of delegates at the national convention.

Strangely enough, Iowa doesn't get penalized. It seems this is because their delegates are free to vote as they see fit at the convention -- they don't have to go along with the wishes of the state voters who selected them.

[isawlogs]

  Okayy what is "   an incumbent president or an incumbent vice president "  ???

   

 

[Gary_C]

Marcel

Vous êtes bienvenu

Incumbent veut dire le titulaire

Comprenez-vous ?

[asy]

Marcel, I have no idea what Gary said, I suspect you will ;) , but, just in case anyone else (who doesn't speak French) is wondering "Incumbent" means the person currently in the office. So, an Incumbent president is one who is currently in office.

Once the new president is elected in November, s/he'll be called the "President Elect" until they are inaugurated, at which time they will become the Incumbent president.

See?

asy :D

[isawlogs]

Asy , yes I do understand what Gary wrote, as far as the frog language goes ....  lets just not go there .  ;)

Thank you ,the explination it is very clear . 

[Gary_C]

I confess. I used an online translator.
J'admets. J'ai utilisé un traducteur en ligne.

anyone else (who doesn't speak frog-language)

What is frog-language?   

[OneWithWood]

Just to be sure no one is steered down a winding dead-end road:

Here is the quick definition of liberalism:

noun:   an economic theory advocating free competition and a self-regulating market and the gold standard
noun:   a political orientation that favors progress and reform

This definition comes from the One-Look Dictionary - a neat resource that puts the definitions of multiple dictionaries at your fingertips.  http://www.onelook.com/

This term is often used incorrectly, often to cast aspersions on folks who happen to have a different opinion on how best to keep the big man (and which big man) making money.  The trickle down effect is alive and well in both the conservative and liberal camps.

[asy]

anyone else (who doesn't speak frog-language)

What is frog-language?   

Gary, that colloquialism is generally used in Australia as an endearing way to say "French". I was unaware that it was offensive to some people, but this has now been brought to my attention and I have altered my original post to reflect what I meant.  :-\

I'm TRULY sorry if I upset anyone, you know I didn't mean it. 

I'll be more careful next time.  :'(

asy :D

[DouginUtah]

More definitions:

The domination of business by government is called Communism.  The domination of government by business is called Fascism.

Which way are we heading?  ;D