The caucus system disenfranchises too many voters!

[doyourealize1]

The caucus system disenfranchises:

1. working class Americans with little time
2. the elderly, many of whom find it difficult to go out to caucus or are not able to stand in line for more than an hour
3. the disabled
4. Americans abroad
5. people that don't have convenient forms of transportation, especially when the weather is bad
6. people that give into voter intimidation, which likely occurs (but varies depending on the caucus site)
7. people whose caucus organizers do not run the process seamlessly
8. single parents

As Dems we know about voter disenfranchisement from the 2000 election. We fought for every last vote til the bitter end, and the republicans called us whiners for decrying the sham of an election process. If even one voter gets disenfranchised then there is a flaw in the system. If hundreds or thousands get disenfranchised, then the system needs to be revamped.

The caucus system is written in the rules, but it's not a good system by any means. I hope the party gets rid of it eventually. I believe in everyone having an equal voice. I don't believe that the "strong and the dedicated" should have the luxury of having a proportionally greater voice than the large number of people who are inconvenienced by their own life situation. The fact that over 300 million people live in this country but only a minutae of these people go to caucus is troubling. The demographics at caucus are invariably skewed towards certain types of people. This is not democracy!

The ideal process is the most standardized one. Anonymity decreases intimidation. Mail-in ballots increases participation. Decreased time constraints increases the variability of the population sample voting. The primary system represents this process.

Primaries are by no means perfect, either. It historically has not represented a completely random sample of the population; young voters, minorities, etc are not equally represented. However, they are more representative of a fair, unbiased, standardized process than are caucuses.

This is not a post skewed towards either candidate. This post is in response to what I've gleaned on the voting process itself and my beliefs that elections should be fair and representative of the entire population rather than a select few. The more voices the better. There is no reason to want 100k voters in a state instead of 600k when voter turnout in America has already been historically low.