The Nation: Student Caucus-Crashing Debate Continues

[marmar]

STUDENT CAUCUS-CRASHING DEBATE CONTINUES...Both Hillary Clinton and Chris Dodd have backed down from their comments last weekend claiming that Barack Obama's efforts to get out-of-state Iowa students to come back for the caucus was legally and/or morally dubious.

Yesterday, the Clinton campaign issued a statement via email to a blogger at Future Majority, saying, "the Iowa caucus is so special because it is based on Iowa values. We believe that every Iowan and every student who is eligible to caucus in Iowa should do so and we hope they do."

But it took them a while to decide where students fit into those Iowa values. Just Monday, Clinton said in a speech at Clear Lake Iowa, that the caucus "is a process for Iowans. This needs to be all about Iowa, and people who live here, people who pay taxes here."

Young bloggers and activists quickly jumped on this, rightly pointing out that students do in fact pay taxes in Iowa-- sales tax, and income taxes. USA Today reported in 2003 that 77% of American undergraduates work during the school year.

Dodd's campaign has also been forced to "clarify," telling another young blogger that they think students should participate in the caucuses, but were worried Obama was busing in students who don't go to school in Iowa to campaign events. I'm a bit confused as to how that is a real threat-- supporters from out of state have long flooded early primary states before the election, but they certainly can't vote. It seems like a bit of a cop-out after his strong claim that Obama was recruiting "thousands of out-of-state residents to come to Iowa for the caucuses."

The most bothersome thing about these statements is that they are responses to individual bloggers. While it's great that campaigns are paying attention to what's being said on the web, their original statements were made in the national arena, for all to hear. The retractions aren't getting the same attention. The issue is left hanging outside of the blogosphere, covered by the mainstream media as a Clinton-Obama spat, without addressing the substance of the matter.

This shouldn't be about campaign tactics, and it shouldn't be just about Iowa. It's about guaranteeing young people the right to vote, and breaking down barriers to participation. Young voters are constantly disparaged for their apathy and low turnout, but it seems that just when youth participation start to swell, pundits and candidates start using their votes as a political football.


Posted by Cora Currier at 12/07/2007 @ 10:42am

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/campaignmatters?bid=45&pid=257750

[frazzled]

1. End. Of. Story.

It is completely legal for students attending college in Iowa, even if from out of state, to vote and participate in caucuses there. This is the law.

It is completely desirable to increase the number of eligibile young voters in the election and caucus process: not to suppress their participation.

Students who live in Iowa during their college years, for the majority of the year, have a stake in the state's issues. Many of them have part-time jobs in the state that require them to pay taxes there, and nearly all are paying sales tax to the state.

If anyone at a caucus has a question as to whether a young person is actually a student at an Iowa college or university, all they have to do is ask to see their school ID: all students carry them.

[Bullet1987]

2. Of course Clinton wants as least college students to attend

as possible. Because they all OVERWHELMINGLY support Obama.

[Cameron27]

3. That's true, but it's also Chris Dodd who took up

Yepsen's argument. The only thing I have to say about it is this: if Obama buses a significant number of students from Illinois into Iowa, say thousands, legal or not, he might get backlash from the permanent Iowa residents.

[suston96]

4. The Iowa caucuses have always been...

...a dubious way to launch a democratic election. That 15% rule is questionable, if not silly. The voter eligibility process leaves room for voter fraud. (Students or others voting in Iowa AND in their home state).

It is the media and a disinterested American populace that continues to support these undemocratic election processes that have been and still are so easily corrupted.

How about a simple paper ballot for each registered member of the respective political party, and a simple X next to or over the photo of the candidate and then you count the ballots, and then.....

Oh, never mind. That's a silly idea too.

[IA_Seth]

5. Or, here is a novel idea, you could let Iowans decide?

How about we decide what our nominating process looks like?

[suston96]

6. Sure decide....

....but if it is about a national political party the Iowa decision, and any other state process, should be the same as the rest of the country.

You see, there have been states, and subsequent court cases, where the state political parties made such incredibly bigoted rules regarding voters and candidates so as to keep the "wrong" people from voting or running for office.

Sorry, the most blatant corruption in American elections is not Diebold or that ilk, but rather lack of national uniformity. You cannot have 50 different eligibilities or qualifications for the voters - and the candidates. It has to be done the same way, all over the land.

[frazzled]

8. So you are saying "Iowans" want to disregard federal law?

Is this a real antipathy towards students who attend your universities and colleges, who pay tuition to the state (in the case of the University of Iowa and other state institutions) and thereby help to insure the high quality of education there, who help support all manner of state programs by paying taxes there, and who want to be involved in the political process (a right they enjoy under federal law). Or is this just a case of Iowa students not being for the right candidate?

I truly don't understand this. Decades and decades ago, when I attended school in New York, I voted in New York in my first presidential primary (after college, I continued to live there). During the time I was in school, I had jobs that meant I paid city and state taxes. I actually even voted in Burrough elections and City Council elections, because I was interested in it.

[suston96]

10. Who me?

Are you addressing that question to me? If so, I don't know what you are talking about. The weird Iowa "caucus" process and the media frenzy in engenders is not good for the democratic election regimen that should assure one person, one vote, and each of those votes being counted.

I am for uniformity of elections. A national primary day so that voters aren't influenced by "betting on a winner". A national runoff general election where the popular vote winners are elected.

And yes, that means a sad farewell to the easily corruptible electoral college fiasco.

As to students? Of course they should vote. If the state they are going to school in allows out-of-staters to register and vote there, good for all of us. But they cannot register and vote back home if they vote in their college state.

[frazzled]

11. No, it was addressed to post #5

This notion of "let the locals decide who should get to vote" is truly misguided: In Mississippi and Alabama, the majority of voters did not want African Americans to vote for many years--the federal government had to step in to intervene. The majority doesn't get to decide what rights minorities (including the 18-26 age group) get to have: the Constitution decides that.

I am not a big fan of caucuses either ... but primaries, we must understand, are PARTY events, and therefore unlike general elections. Each state's party gets to decide on its rules. Should we have the government decide how the parties should nominate their candidates? I'm not so sure that's a great idea either. But this discussion is not about that--it's about who has the right to vote (regardless of the method). That is a question that has been decided in the courts.

As our good friend Donald Rumsfeld used to say: Democracy is messy. (yes, I'm being sarcastic.)

[suston96]

12. Should we have the government decide how the parties should nominate their candidates?

Yes. Because We, the People, are the government.

I repeat: there must be national uniformity or there will be chaos, if not corruption.

In this present system, national political parties nominate candidates. Thus, in the case of the Presidency and Vice-Presidency, two out of a handul of candidates will become the constitutional leaders of the nation.

Sorry, but I don't want a handful of people in a small mid-western state, pick their own date to "caucus" and in collusion with a whacko media, decide that they will start and direct the course of a national federal election.

[frazzled]

15. Don't confuse political parties with 'the government'

That is what the Bush administration has done, to catastrophic effect. Parties are just that: alliances of likeminded citizens. They exclude non-likeminded citizens. The government is indeed the property of all citizens.

Primaries are simply nominating procedures for individual parties. There could, conceivably, exist more than the two major political parties--and indeed, such parties have risen and fallen in our past history.

[suston96]

18. Not getting it.....

"The government is indeed the property of all citizens."

No, the government IS all the citizens. We, the people, do not create a government. We are the government already. We framed a government once - back in 1787.

We pick leaders and representatives to do our bidding. This "picking" process gets complicated when the major political parties are so large that they can pick the eventual winners of the elections.

Therefore, the Constitution and the people who wrote and own it, must be involved with all phases of picking respresentatives who make their laws and the executors of those laws. In most part, the Constitution already does that.

The biggest mistake the Founders made was acceding to the states in the "times, places, and manner" of elections. 50 different states. 50 different ways to nominate and elect candidates?

Not good. There must be uniformity in all federal elections. And the best way to do that is to hold a national primary picking the top tier of a fixed number of finalists, followed by a general election picking the President and Vice President. Sorry, no more electoral college bamboozle.

[IA_Seth]

14. I don't disagree with Obama's call to students...

Your frustration is best placed elsewhere, my comment was directed at the poster who thought he knew better than Iowans on how to nominate Iowa's candidate by calling our caucus process "dubious".

I welcome Iowa's students (whether they grew up here or not) to vote in our elections and get engaged in our process through the caucus. One of Iowa's main goals should be to embrace the younger, college-educated citizens and what better way than giving them a say in the political process?

[frazzled]

16. Apologies for misinterpreting your statement

I guess we are all doing the "you talking to me?" thing.

I agree with you entirely, and hope most Iowans do, too.

[Adelante]

7. Dodd is making even less sense now, if possible

"worried Obama was busing in students who don't go to school in Iowa to campaign events"

Huh? Since when haven't campaigns done this, bring in supporters to other states? :shrug:

I thought the "problem" was out of state student residents of Iowa exercising their legal voting rights.

[Cameron27]

9. I thought the same thing,

I don't know what he's talking about.

[killbotfactory]

13. The students are living and working in Iowa

And they should get to vote in Iowa.

[Selatius]

17. The Supreme Court laid to rest this issue years ago. Out-of-state college students can vote.

The Bill of Rights applies for college students as well regardless of which state they attend. If I studied in California but came from Mississippi, the law says I can participate in California's elections rather than fly all the way back home just to cast a ballot.