Five Things on Caucusing

1. First things first, it's just fun to say "caucus." Try it. Caucus. See?

2. If you live in KANSAS, you must caucus to support your candidate on Tuesday, February 5th. Don't know where to go? This link will help.

3. Now, for the good stuff. What the hell is a caucus? And how is it different from a primary?

From howstuffworks.com:

Presidential election primaries and caucuses are two very different methods of accomplishing the same basic thing. Simply put, they are both a means for each political party to let voters nationwide select their party's presidential nominee. More specifically, primaries and caucuses are means of selecting delegates (representatives of party members in each state) to send to the party's national convention.

At the Democratic convention, the number of state delegates is proportional to the number of votes received in the state primary or caucus. The total number of delegates each party can send to the national convention is again dictated by party rules. Usually the party determines the number of delegates through a formula factoring in state population, the number of elected officials in office, and that state's past support of party candidates.

Federal law doesn't dictate how states choose their delegates, so individual states decide what system to use. Most states use the primary system -- where voters statewide simply cast a vote for the candidate they support -- but some use the older caucus system.

Check out this Step-by-Step Guide for the Kansas Caucus at the Obama site.

4.Iowa is the land of the Caucus. And the home of Rudy, the two-headed pig.


5. Participating in the democratic process is cool. You might actually meet your neighbors and find out you have something in common. Or they might glare at you and mutter under their breath like they always do. Whatever the case, you'll be spending an hour of your life in a crowd of people who care about the direction their government is going. And that can't be all bad, can it?