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Comment by yongjik | Hacker News Reader

Sorry for tooting the horn again, but this is really a solved problem. You go with paper ballots and vote-counting machines. The result is available pretty fast, and when there's concern you can always re-count everything by hand.

This is how it's supposed to work: https://youtu.be/ViK9pe9Pv_s?t=27

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That's never been how caucuses work, so it's not quite a solution to this problem.

the solution is to modernize and stop having ridiculously archaic caucuses

Caucuses are great. High information voters who have to publicly stand by their candidate, and persuade other members of their community to support their candidate. More on the “democracy” side of the equation than the “republic” side.

That is not what happened.

The OP wasn't being metaphorical in any sense, they were literally describing how caucuses work. If your first choice doesn't meet a qualifying threshold in your precinct, then you can switch your vote in the second round, and supporters of other candidates can literally try to convince you before that round. It all happens in the open with people literally crossing to different parts of the room to caucus for different candidates. The app -- and its failure -- didn't change any part of this process.

But the Iowa caucuses also has a delegate apportionment system that privileges rural voters over those in large cities, similar to the electoral college. It strains meaning to describe something designed to produce an undemocratic outcome as being more democratic than republican.

That's a real issue -- and one that seems like it's going to have an actual effect this time around, giving Buttigieg slightly more delegates than Sanders even though Sanders actually has slightly more support. I think the Iowa Caucus worked as designed, despite the collapse of the app, but just like the Electoral College, that doesn't mean the actual design is good!

What about the Iowa Caucuses makes you believe these are "high information" voters? They often have nonsensical positions and ranked choices. They're committed voters, but that is not at all the same thing.

This [0] was my favorite "high information voter" story so far.

[0] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mayor-pete-buttigieg-gay-iowa-c...

That's the obvious and vivid example, but more broadly and tellingly are people's stated preferences and the outcomes of realignments, where people are oscillating between progressive and moderate candidates. I see no evidence that Iowa voters are "high-information"; I think most of them see participatory politics as a sport, just like voters in every other state.

That's begging the question though. The problem is not that caucuses are old—caucuses were just fine before this app-driven craze to change them.

We don't know that they were fine. Until Sanders campaign urged them to make a change in transparency, only the final delegate count was reported. So it could've been a dumpster fire every other time and they just obscured the discrepancies with "final delegate count"

> The result is available pretty fast, and when there's concern you can always re-count everything by hand.

Good old progressive enhancement. Not sure why people want to rip out the old functionality (paper) until the new functionality (e-voting) has a solid track record on it's own.

Doesn't matter the track record, everything can be hacked, and will be hacked if the prize is high enough.

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