In the Washington caucuses, many people brought their kids of all ages.

... but I have to guess (not being a parent) that some parents would find the prospect of managing a child for three hours in a crowded gym a little bit daunting.

In any case, "many" is not the same as equal representation for all, which is my point.

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.

Not everyone can vote...and it's not secret...None of the headlines said a word. Outrageous.

Seriously, the vast majority of American populace has no idea how caucuses really work: Right after the Iowa caucus, my hairdresser was crowing over the Obama win. But when I told her how the caucus actually worked, she was flabbergasted--she thought that a caucus was just like a regular primary and she was visibly angry that such a undemocratic voting process had such a huge impact.

And I'll say that even if my candidate wins.

Caucuses suck for all the reasons you've indicated and I'll add one more unknown, we don't know how the social nature of them changes folks' behavior. Do they make them more lopsided because people want to go along with the crowd? Do they have a disparate effect on people based on sex (there are a number of studies showing women to be less likely to speak up during things like college classes)? How about race? We have no idea.

Washington State is particularly egregious. Citizens put forward a referendum to force primaries. The state is holding primaries. The democratic party chose to allocate delegates based solely on the caucus results even though polls showed that 88% of democrats polled intended to participate in the primary and only 1/3 in the caucus. What's worse, many people were confused and thought the primary counted. For some reason, when a voter gets a ballot and marks a choice, he or she thinks that should matter. Stupid voters.

Another problem with the caucus system is its lack of transparency and the inability to determine the popular vote.

Caucuses are also give participants more weight in terms of delegates. If you assume Washington State's participation doubled this year to 200,000, then it got a pledged delegate for about every 2,500 participants. California got a pledged delegate for every 10,000 voters. Why the difference? Because delegates are allocated based on Democratic registration and primaries encourage more registered democrats to participate.

Add to the Caucus problem, the ass backwards system of allocating pledged delegates that led to Clinton getting one more delegate than Edwards out of Iowa and Obama getting one more pledged delegate out of Nevada than Clinton. In Nevada the reason for Obama's extra delegate is white rural districts are over-weighted. Way to go, democrats!

And I've actually read Obama supporters (note, not the Obama campaign) predicting that he's going to get more pledged delegates in Texas than his popular vote would suggest because the heavily hispanic districts are under weighted when compared with white and AA districts. Again, way to go democrats!

We're obviously stuck with this terrible system this year. But there is no reason why all democrats shouldn't be working to reform it for 2012. There's simply no reason for the democratic party to hold caucuses, which empower the Democratic elite over the masses, or to allocate delegates in ways that are inconsistent with the popular vote.

I say we have a primary in every state and allocate delegates based on the popular vote in every state. And while we're at it, can we make all the primaries closed, please.

If there's a silver lining to this primary it is the revolt of many of the state Democratic parties against the idiocy perpetuated by the DNC. That pushback will only increase, and the DNC is going to have to rework this process with major state input or find them selves entirely irrelevant.

Caucuses need to go; primaries only, with voting by mail and over several days if not a full week, absolutely close them to party registrants only, and hold the first round in the 5 states with the largest Democratic turnout in the last national election. Republican states like Iowa and New Hampshire can wait until summer for all I care.

I work a precinct board in cali, and I am probably the only person in my neighborhood who knows what the county democratic committee is

people in caucus states have great grass-roots activism

we ain't got any grass-roots around here

and about that "math question", it ain't math, it's ARITHMATIC. math involves variables

'cause that is a factor too.

when my folks lived in WI i was in school, and i didn't like being a chicago "voter," so i kept my registration at their house. they lived right on the iowa border. before they bought that house, the almost bought one in iowa, and they worked and socialized a lot in iowa as well as WI.

anyway, i can just imagine what it would've been like, had we been registered iowa caucus goers and had to publically declare things in that part of the state. eastern, rural, painfully white...oh, yeah, they're really going to want to hear about what my gay black atheist ass has to say about who is the best candidate. not to mention what it would've meant for my folks, who actually had to live there. again, i'm not saying people in iowa are all backwards racists and bigots, but it's a different situation, when 'everyone knows' about your family's preferences and ideologies. at the time, mom worked in a competitive field, and having people like her made a difference in her bottom line. i've thought about it, and had we been voters in iowa, i don't think i would've participated, out of respect for her need to earn money in a homogeneous community in which she was already one of only a tiny handful of black people. she was also "new," in that country sense. in many rural communities, it takes a decade of living there and two kids in the school system before you're really accepted into a community.

caucusing sucks, but i suspect the WA example cited above shows us the problem. which is that it is a party process, and not a function of the state. that right there is undemocratic. imho, there should be a month of national primaries, with both mail in and in person voting, over a series of weekends (both sat and sunday.) they should be evenly divided between the four regions of the country, and the order should rotate year to year, so no state is always "first." all parties that get 1% of the population (or some small and reasonable number) to sign a petition to put candidates on the ballot should be allowed to do so, and no debate should fail to include all candidates.

but i'm not queen of the universe, so that's not going to happen today.

What's your pleasure? Variables? A differential equation?

Possibly a crossword puzzle for the verbally inclined?

[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.