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January 24, 2000 Iowa Presidential Caucuses
Iowa's first in the nation precinct caucuses are a function of the political parties. The Auditor's Office does not conduct the caucuses, report results, or play a direct role. However, since the caucus process involves voter registration, precincts, and choosing our nation's highest elected official, we receive many questions about the caucuses. Delegates to the national conventions that nominate each party's presidential candidate are elected in a process that begins here in Iowa at the grass-roots caucus level. Each party will conduct caucuses at 2,143 precinct sites, ranging from rooms in public facilities to private homes. The record for attendance was set in 1988, when 125,000 Democrats and 109,000 Republicans participated. On September 18, 1999, the state Republican central committee voted to move the caucus date from February 7, 2000 to January 31 to protect the caucuses' first in the nation status. The Democratic Party planned to make the same change (the two parties have traditionally cooperated and held caucuses on the same date). However, on September 28, the New Hampshire Secretary of State announced that state would hold its presidential primary on February 1. This surprised Iowa officials, who had expected a February 8 New Hampshire primary, and jeopardized a 1983 agreement between the two states to keep an eight day gap between the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. Officials of both parties announced October 14 that in order to keep the eight day gap between Iowa and New Hampshire, they would move the caucuses to January 24. Iowa's first in the nation caucuses are an unintended result of reforms that grew out of opposition to the Vietnam War. After the bitterly fought 1968 Democratic National Convention, Democrats adopted new rules to open up the party to minorities, women, young people, and others who felt disenfranchised. The new rules called for more meetings, better advance notice of meetings and new procedures allowing all party members to discuss platform issues. In order to do all this and still hold their state convention in June, Iowa Democrats scheduled their caucuses in late January. This placed the 1972 Iowa caucuses ahead of the New Hampshire primary, which had been the nation's first presidential contest for many decades. The first candidate to notice Iowa's early date was George McGovern (a member of the commission that wrote the new rules). Though McGovern finished second in the 1972 caucuses, his unexpected strong showing made him seem like the big winner. The Iowa strategy started the ball rolling for McGovern, who won the Democratic nomination. In 1976, two important events happened: Iowa Republicans for the first time held their caucuses on the same night as the Democrats, and a little known former Georgia governor finished second to "uncommitted" in the Democratic caucuses. After Jimmy Carter won the presidency, his Iowa strategy was quickly adopted by other candidates. Since 1980, the Iowa caucuses have been the first significant contest in both parties. In order to do well in the caucuses, candidates have devoted large amounts of campaign time to Iowa and built extensive organizations to get out their supporters on caucus night. Every four years, Iowa must fend off threats from other states. Democratic party rules let Iowa have the first official contest, but Republican rules don't prevent other states from competing with Iowa. In 1996, two states held Republican caucuses before Iowa, but most candidates did not participate. Critics of the Iowa caucuses say too much attention is paid to a relatively small state that does not represent the nation as a whole. Supporters say campaigning in Iowa is one-on-one with voters, and forces candidates to do more than just broadcast television commercials. In both parties, a caucus participant must be a resident of the precinct and be at least 18 years old as of November 7, 2000. Participants must actually attend the caucus in the precinct in which they live - there is no absentee voting. In addition, participants must be registered to vote with the party whose caucus they are attending. Both parties allow participants to register or update their registration on caucus night. The parties are then responsible for returning the voter registration forms to our office. Both parties discuss issues and candidates, choose party precinct officers, and elect delegates to the party's county convention, usually held in March. County conventions elect delegates to congressional district and state conventions, which elect national convention delegates. The national conventions formally nominate the party's presidential candidate.
The number of county convention delegates elected from each precinct is determined by each party, based on how many votes the party's candidates received in that precinct in recent elections. The two parties elect their county convention delegates differently.
Sample Republican Caucus
 Democrats
elect their county convention delegates by presidential preference group,
rather than by the whole caucus. At the time delegates are elected, the
caucus splits up into preference groups - supporters of each candidate gather in
different parts of the room. There is no secret ballot and no straw
poll.
A presidential preference group must have at least 15% of the precinct's total number of caucus attendees in order to elect county convention delegates. Participants are allowed to regroup if their candidate has too few supporters to choose a delegate or if they decide to support another candidate. Sample Democratic Caucus
After the caucuses are completed, county parties report their results to state party headquarters in Des Moines. The state parties then report their results to the news media. For more
information about the caucuses,
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Republicans
conduct a straw poll for President by secret ballot. The whole
caucus then elects delegates and alternates to the county convention.