It is quite astonishing to see with what deadpan and neutral a tone our press and television report the open corruption—and the flagrantly anti-democratic character—of the Iowa caucuses. It's not enough that we have to read of inducements openly offered to potential supporters—I almost said "voters"—even if these mini-bribes only take the form of "platters of sandwiches" and "novelty items" (I am quoting from Sunday's New York Times). It's also that campaign aides are showing up at Iowan homes "with DVD's that [explain] how the caucuses work." Nobody needs a DVD to understand one-person-one-vote, a level playing field, and a secret ballot. The DVD and the other gifts and goodies (Sen. Barack Obama is promising free baby-sitting on Thursday) are required precisely because none of those conditions applies in Iowa. In a genuine democratic process, these Tammany tactics would long ago have been declared illegal. But this is not a democratic process, and besides, as my old friend Michael Kinsley used to say about Washington, the scandal is never about what's illegal. It's about what's legal.Everyone agrees that the election system is messed up and should be fixed. Polls show that other Americans are sick of Iowa and New Hampshire's dominance. People call for an adjustment of this system every four years. And nothing gets done. All that would be needed would be for the national parties to show some strength over the state parties and be willing to offend Iowans and New Hampshirites. And these are the same sorts of politicians who claim that they can fix all sorts of intractable problems such as fighting terrorism or fixing health care without damaging our health system.
UPDATE: The New York Times has a story on all the drawbacks of the caucus system.
Because the caucuses, held in the early evening, do not allow absentee voting, they tend to leave out nearly entire categories of voters: the infirm, soldiers on active duty, medical personnel who cannot leave their patients, parents who do not have baby sitters, restaurant employees on the dinner shift, and many others who work in retail, at gas stations and in other jobs that require evening duty.All those "little people" that John Edwards wants to fight for and they can't come out and express their electoral preferences because of the decision that the parties in Iowa have made to have a caucus system rather than a regular primary. My one fervent hope is that all this publicity on Iowa and its peculiarities this year will spark some real change for 2012.