(This is an updated version of this post, revised Feb. 13, 10:27 a.m.)

A buzz is building in some political circles to do away altogether with state caucuses in the presidential nominating process.

After the vote-counting mess in the Republican caucuses in Iowa and Nevada, some critics say these events – largely run by untrained local party volunteers – should no longer receive recognition from the parties as legitimate elections.
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In addition, the caucus votes in Minnesota and Colorado and the “beauty contest” in Missouri sparked much momentum and upbeat headlines for Rick Santorum, but they delivered no delegates for the former senator. The delegate selection process in those states comes later.
Maine wrapped up their caucus results on Saturday even though not everyone had the opportunity to vote.
Maine spent a week holding caucuses across that tiny state but in Washington County the Saturday caucus was cancelled due to about four inches of snowfall. Seriously — they simply cancelled the vote, which put Mitt Romney’s 194-vote victory in Maine in question and drew howls of protest from second-place finisher Ron Paul.
But I have to ask why anyone would take the Maine caucuses seriously.

Charlie Webster, the state GOP chairman, explained that Romney’s narrow margin over Paul is a “snapshot in time” that fairly and accurately represented the state’s overall results.
The state party instructed Republican organizations to hold local caucuses around the state between Feb. 4 and 11. Some caucuses were held earlier than Feb. 4, and their numbers still counted in the state tally. But others, such as those of some towns in Hancock County, weren’t scheduled until after Feb. 11.
In Washington County, GOP officials asked to reschedule their caucus for next Saturday and they were denied by Webster.

So, Romney won the state and regained his momentum for the highest office in the land based on his 1,996 votes. To put that into perspective, last November the two winning candidates for Eastpointe (Mich.) City Council each topped the 2,000-vote mark.
And, keep in mind, this whole messy, inaccurate process in Maine was little more than a straw poll and is not linked to the awarding of delegates, which will come later.

The first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses have through the years largely escaped criticism aimed at the fact that the Hawkeye State, too, relies upon a multi-layer process to select delegates, which sometimes means the January caucus results eventually shake out as irrelevant.
But the Iowa nominating process took a beating this year after Mitt Romney was declared the winner and then a tardy attempt to legitimately count all the votes revealed two weeks later that Santorum had more votes in a “split decision.”
Iowa GOP officials had to admit that they will never know for certain who won. Results from eight precincts are missing and the party discovered inaccuracies in 131 precincts. As a result, the Iowa Republican Party chair resigned in disgrace.
And in Nevada, it took two days just to count 33,000 votes, despite a 26 percent reduction in turnout from 2008. The Saturday, Feb. 4, caucus results were not certified until 1 a.m. on Monday, Feb. 6, after all the candidates and media had fled the state.
Now, let’s put into perspective the pathetic turnout and nightmarish counting process that led to such a long wait. Macomb County is split into three state Senate districts and each of the losing Senate candidates in the 2010 election received more than 33,000 votes.
I suspect the Nevada caucus overseers went to the Iowa school of vote counting. News reports indicated that when problems became obvious on election night the counters put all ballots from disputed areas — about 200 precincts – into one “trouble box” for further review.
“It’s embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to the party. It’s embarrassing to the state,” said Jon Ralston, a Nevada political pundit who has been covering politics in the state for more than two decades. “Ridicule has been pouring in.”
Ralston said the problems were caused by Nevada’s Republican Party being “completely incompetent”.
“Why it took so long after (the caucuses closed) is a combination of ineptitude and some troublesome precincts that they took way too long to resolve. So it’s just general incompetence.”
Wizened political pundits who have seen proposals for presidential election reform come and go for decades predict that any effort to eliminate state caucuses will fail, in part due to Iowa’s outsized influence on the nominating system.
But what is the alternative: a nation that relies upon “beauty contests” and “snapshots in time,” and a system plagued by missing ballots and cancelled votes to choose our president? Doesn’t that taint our November elections and our democracy?
These caucuses have a tremendous impact on a candidate’s fortunes — press coverage, fundraising, momentum, volunteers, TV ad buys — but they have very little integrity.
I have to ask: If a rag-tag vote-counting process that wouldn’t pass muster for a high school student council election doesn’t spark a change, what will?

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