Both parties expect smaller crowds in Colorado caucuses

AP via The Daily Sentinel ^ | 3/1/2016

[Vaduz]

Indeed the same here in this stoner state of California heads are always in the clouds.

[snarkpup]

So, just so I’m clear; If we go tonight, to the best of your knowledge, we will selecting someone to attend the County (or State) ‘convention’ as a delegate, and those delegates in turn will vote for Cruz, Trump, or one of the others?

Yes, but there is at least one additional level. Attendees at the state convention do not vote for Cruz, Trump, etc. They instead vote for yet another level of delegates who say they will vote for Cruz, Trump, etc. at the national convention.

Are these delegates required to vote for the candidate we choose tonight?

I'm not sure; and they may have changed it. In any event, the extent to which this is binding can be unpredictable, especially if the national convention goes to multiple rounds of balloting or if the candidate a delegate says they will vote for drops out before the national convention. As I have mentioned in other posts, we have had significant problems with people lying about who they support.

The last time I participated in this system (four years ago), the rules were so complex and so poorly documented that when I asked eight different people in authority a question about how delegates vs. alternates worked at the state level, I literally got eight different answers.

[Balding_Eagle]

Thank you for that information.

Damn, I knew the republican Party was screwed up here in CO, I didn’t know it was that screwed up.

I hope the next President uses his bully pulpit to beat our local leaders about the head and encourages them to make a working system.

[snarkpup]

A couple years ago, the caucus attendees and the delegates they selected for the county assemblies got a resolution up to the state convention level to have a real presidential primary; but it got killed at the state level. The problem is that a delegate to the state convention is representing several thousand people and thus has several thousand times the voting power of a member of the general public. They are not willing to give up this power.

[snarkpup]

My information is four years old, which was the last time I attended (and ran) a caucus. If you attend, you'll have to check with the precinct committeepeople running it for current details, assuming they know.

The only state convention I've attended was in an off-presidential year. A neighbor who went to the next convention and got selected to attend to the national said that the way it works at the state convention is that those who want to attend the national convention make speeches at the state convention, and then the attendees vote for which of these people get to be delegates.

From this, I assume that someone at a caucus could say they support candidate A to get selected at the precinct level, but then vote for a supporter of candidate B once they are at the state convention. In practice, it may not be this complicated to game the system; I think the Ron Paul people in the last election were able to lie their way all the way through it.

[stocksthatgoup]

GOPe “when we want your vote we will give it to you!”

[kitchen]

My rural, conservative county got folded into the same voting district as Boulder.

Part of the reason for that maneuver was to give the easterners a "seat at the table" for Western Slope water decisions. Wait for the mandatory composting toilets so they can ship more water back to the Denver-Boulder metroplex cesspool of left coast loonies and illegal criminal mexican invaders. (O.K. I made the part about the toilets up.)

[PJ-Comix]

Democrat turnout could be improved significantly if their caucus sites provided free “medicinal” marijuana.

[snarkpup]

Democrat turnout could be improved significantly if their caucus sites provided free “medicinal” marijuana.

I would assume that the Democrats are like the Republican Party and do not want turnout improved. The purpose of the three-level caucus/assembly/convention mess is to try to confine participation in the system to just the insiders and die-hards who can stomach all the crap that is involved.