Hawkeye Caucki

Iowa’s 14.4 percent

The story this past week was that Donald Trump blew away the competition at the Iowa caucuses. The Hawkeye Republicans gave Trump a bit more than 50 percent of their vote. Which is big—a plurality usually wins it because Iowa’s first-inthe-nation vote features a lot of candidates.

The press called Donald Trump’s win “emphatic” and “clear-cut” and a “landslide.” But a look into the numbers can give the other candidates hope.

Maybe because of a historic winter storm and low temps, the Iowa Caucus featured the lowest turnout in years. The Wall Street Journal says just over 108,000 votes were cast—14.4 percent of the 752,000-plus registered Republicans in Iowa. The Trump people might say that’s because everybody assumed he would win in a walk, so folks decided to stay warm at home.

Another way to look at it: Fewer people were excited about an expected Trump win.

Donald Trump is essentially running as an incumbent, having been the last Republican president and having made it clear for years that he plans to get back to the White House. Voters know him. And he could only muster half of the Republican votes in Iowa. (He and Nikki Haley are tied 40-40 in New Hampshire, which will be heard from in a few days.)

That 14.4 percent tells a story; several stories. One of them being:

This is an awful way for the nation to nominate presidential candidates. Why should 14.4 percent of one state— and not a very representative state at that—have this much power? Only 108,000 people have voted so far, and already candidates have had to drop out of the race. About 108,000 people watched the last Michigan-Ohio State football game. In person.

There are those in Iowa who’d say that state deserves to go first because its citizens do the work and study the candidates, often talking to them oneon-one and asking “real people” questions.

About what? Ethanol? As for these civics-minded residents who take their jobs so seriously come presidential election season, the vast majority of them didn’t brave the cold Monday night.

Again, 14.4 percent.

This is another good opportunity to think about changing the order of vote every four years. There are several plans wafting around, but we like the one that John McCain promoted during one of his maverick moods:

That plan would divide the country into quadrants. Think of it as an SEC section, a Great Lakes/New England section, a Pacific Northwest/Upper Rocky Mountain Section and then California/Etc. section. They would take turns going first every four years and rotate accordingly.

The vote in each section could be separated by a month or so, giving the country four Super Tuesdays every presidential election year, but more importantly, giving voters in every part of the country an opportunity to be heard. In the current system, how many Americans are going to vote when the nominations are already sewn up? Montana won’t vote this year until June!

There is nothing in the Constitution requiring Iowa and New Hampshire to have the kind of hold on the nomination process that they’re given. There isn’t even anything in tradition that suggests it. This “custom” was started in the 1970s.

The McCain plan could be modified, for example, to allow Iowa and New Hampshire to go first (if they must) and then have the four Super Tuesdays after that. And every few cycles, maybe Arkansans would have a big say about who the political parties nominate to be, ahem, the whole country’s president.

In this democracy we’ll all have our say in November. But choosing who we see on the ballot in November is often left to a small minority of Americans every four years.

Sometimes as little as 14.4 percent.