Why Caucuses Have Got to Go

Iowa friends - i couldn't find a Nevada caucus meme, or i would've used that instead.

This is the rare political post making a bi-partisan proposition :).  I live in the great state of Nevada, where we just had our primary caucuses.  Though we don't get the Iowa treatment from either the candidates or the national media, we do still get a smattering of attention from both thanks to our third in the nation primary status.  This was my first time participating in a caucus, and though it was a fun and memorable experience, I think the caucuses should be switched to secret ballot for the following 3 reasons:

1) Caucuses are not Nearly as Accessible as Secret Ballots 

Caucuses require you to show up at a certain day and time, to be there for at least 2-3 hours, and often to be on your feet for awhile / climb gym stairs / move around multiple times.  These are just some of the groups that this system excludes:
-people who work during this time or who have made other important commitments
- people who care for others and can't get a substitute caregiver
- people who can't leave the house, can't be around big groups for health reasons, can't be on their feet for hours, etc.
- people who don't want their voting decisions to be public (one participant described the process as "like an awkward middle school dance")

I think the idea is that you get people who are most "committed" to attend this kind of voting, and these are the people who should get to help the party choose the candidate.  But in reality, it ends up excluding a lot of people that (especially for Dems) make up the bulk of the electorate in the general election.  You end up with people who can afford to take time off work, or get child care, or just have more leisure time on their hands - and my anecdotal observation is that this group looks pretty white, middle to upper class, and older - which only represents a narrow segment of voters.  This is inequitable - many of the people who would be MOST affected by things like changes to health care, universal childcare / preK, and other social programs - are unable to come have their say on which candidate's proposals would work best for them.  It's also bad strategy - if we want to nominate the candidate that most people in the party are energized by and will come back out to vote for in the general election, we need as much of the party as possible to have the opportunity to vote in the primaries.

Some of this could, theoretically, be solved by adding early or absentee voting.  This year, for the first time, Nevada allowed early voting for the caucuses.  But because the party didn't correctly anticipate interest in early voting, all of these voting sites had lines that were 3+ hours long and swamped with people - so in reality, most of the same accessibility issues that hamper caucuses also hampered early voting.  If early voting was expanded and an absentee option was added, I think that would fully solve the accessibility problem, but it also *hugely* changes the nature of a caucus, which I will detail in the "political junkie" section below.

2) The Popular Vote Better Shows where Candidates Stand

In caucuses, there's a system of first alignment and then second alignment, designed to consolidate votes to the top few candidates who pull in at least 15% of the total vote count.  The trouble with that, in an election like this, is that when votes are pretty evenly distributed among several candidates, it can vastly misrepresent how badly one candidate did, and how well another candidate did.

The easiest way to illustrate this is to describe how things went for the 3 moderate candidates in my precinct.  Candidates needed to reach a threshold of 15% of voters in order to be "viable" and to get a delegate for the county convention.  In my precinct, the magic number to be viable was 19 votes (out of about 150 voters).  Joe Biden received exactly 19 votes, Pete Buttigieg received 18, and Amy Klobuchar received 13 - a relatively even split.  After the first count, people had to move and land on a candidate that was viable (or else, not have your vote count towards a county delegate).  Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg each gained a couple votes in this reconfiguration, while the Amy Klobuchar supporters reluctantly split off to their second choices.  In the final count, Biden and Pete each got 2 delegates, while Amy Klobuchar got 0.  Not an accurate representation of where people stood walking in.

3) Secret Ballot Provides better Speed and Accuracy of Results

The reason small population states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada get so much attention in the early weeks of the primary season is because the results of these elections give the country an idea of who's in the lead, who's gathering momentum, etc.  Both of the early caucuses took more than a full day to report their results (as opposed to New Hampshire, a secret ballot state, which was able to report its results within a couple hours).  As a spectator, it's extremely frustrating when it takes more than a day for results to come in.  For the candidates who finish in the top couple spots, they lose a lot of the momentum that speedy reporting of a win can provide.

More important is accuracy.  It was informative to attend the caucus and see exactly how it all goes down.  The count is done by a raise of hands, counted and recounted by two members of the Democratic party (and sometimes counted a third time because the first two counts don't match).  Then the results are yelled to the secretary, who often needs it repeated several times because we're in a noisy gymnasium with several other precincts.  Then they add the in-person results to the early voting results, using a calculator.  Can you see the number of spots in this process where there's room for error?!  (If any election lawyer happens to stumble upon this post, I did not spot any actual errors happen - don't subpoena me!  I'm just pointing out that while there's very little room for miscount or miscommunication in a secret ballot, there is a vast ballroom for error in the caucus process.)

Addendum (this one's for the political process junkies):  how did they do early voting under the caucus system, and how did they incorporate those early votes during the caucus?

Early voting, as mentioned above, was used much more heavily than expected by the party.  Consequently, there were 3 hour lines at voting sites and some people (myself included!) had to leave without voting.  However, many were able to take advantage of this option - about 2/3rds of voters in my precinct (and i believe this is representative of the state as a whole) voted early.  (Another signal that people prefer secret ballot!!)  To make it caucus-like, they had people mark their 3 favorite choices in order.

If you attended caucus day, you chose your first alignment without knowing where the early vote stood.  Because so many people early voted, almost everyone (except Bernie supporters) had to wait and see if their candidate was viable.  Once people had committed to their first alignment vote and the count was taken, then the early vote was revealed.  This created some extra excitement, but also took away the ability for people to make strategic decision making based on how the numbers were going.

 It was the same with the second realignment - no early votes were revealed until in-person voters had made their decisions.  So again, no one could strategize based on how the numbers were landing.  Also, early voters did not hear the speeches and the political maneuvering that happened throughout the caucus process (which was the part that I found fun and memorable).

In conclusion - most states have already moved away from caucuses.  Only 4 states still use the caucus system.  It's time for Nevada to move to secret ballot!  (Feel free to share your caucus thoughts and feelings in the comments!)

Home schooling thoughts and Review of "For the Children's Sake"

A little known fact about me is that I like to learn about different home school approaches.  Part of this is because we have a good number of close friends and family who home school.  Part of this is because the older kids are now school age, and it's good to keep track of all the school options.  And part of this is the numerous benefits that I see homeschooling as offering (here are a few):

• It's a good chance to have lots of quality family time - to nurture that bond, to control the environment of your kids, and to let the kids grow up with maximum time around both their parents and siblings.
• It allows you to emphasize what's most important to you both in terms of time spent on certain subjects and how they are taught.  
• You could tailor the education more to the needs and interests of each of the individual kids.
• At least in elementary school, you could shorten up the school day substantially and allow more time for free play and have more freedom in the schedule in general.  If you wanted to travel, or needed to take a sick day, you could work the school schedule around that..

With all of this being true, why don't we homeschool?  (Before I launch into these, I want to really emphasize that this is just how it has gone for OUR family; every family has different kids, different needs, and a different situation; and the home school families I know are doing an amazing job educating their kids.) Here are some of those reasons:

• We have so far had a very positive experience with the kids' public school.  The kids' teachers  are professionally trained to teach, and they have all incorporated things into their lessons that I would have never thought to include.  (I feel like it's worth noting here that I was educated outside of the home for PreK-12, and I had a very positive experience, including some very good teachers, great friends, and rewarding extracurriculars - so that certainly plays into my perception of public school.)
• There are some areas where Josh needs specialized instruction, and the school has met this need - if I was homeschooling, our days would involve a lot of driving around to speech therapy and occupational therapy and that sort of thing.  Which somewhat takes away the freedom of schedule advantage for our family.  
• I will likely go back to work in the next few years, at least on a part time basis.  My years at home have been rewarding and special (and hard!!), but at least for now, I envision a return to the workforce.
• Just to be totally honest, I feel like I would have a really hard time as a home school teacher.  That's a lot of responsibility to be managing (BIG kudos to all you teachers inside *and* outside the home).  Plus, my kids respond differently to me teaching than to other adults doing it.  It's nice to have home mostly just be a haven for rest and relaxation, and the "work" of school happening in a physically separate space.  

So that's the background on my thoughts about homeschooling for our family.   Public school is working well for us for now, but I still like to keep tabs on the homeschooling world.  Related to all this, I recently read the book "For the Children's Sake" by Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, which describes ideas about education and childhood that are based largely on Charlotte Mason homeschooling methods.  I chose to read this book because a friend recommended it to me, and I really respect this person - her character, the way she's lived her life, and the way she's raising her kids.  

This book is best suited for someone who's planning to home school and who is trying to figure out a vision and guiding theory for how to shape that education.  But I feel like it also has lots of value for parents who are thinking about how to best use the hours of childhood outside of school.  (Between weekends, holidays, and breaks, kids have as many days off of school as they have in school, so there is a good amount of time to work with.)

Here are the recommendations in this book that I agree with and that I plan to either keep doing, start incorporating, or ramp up:

• Keep the schedule light - there are so many good options for extracurriculars these days.  Between sports, music, languages, church, scout groups, tutoring / therapies, and the list goes on, you could easily keep your kids enrolled in organized activity every waking minute.  But kids really benefit from down time.  They thrive with time to play, to run around, to daydream, and to be bored.  My kids ask for time to play all the time, and they really struggle on days where those hours are cut short.  We do participate in a few extracurriculars, but I'm doing my best not to bog down the schedule any more, and to keep the outside of school extras to a minimum.  (I find it really challenging to hit this balance just right, and would love any advice from other parents on how you figure this out in your family.)
• Spend lots of time reading together - this is one that Kenny and I both try to do.  Honestly, I'm able to fit a lot more reading in when the kids are on break, so I try to have books queued up for those times.  We also use the library as our second home (this is for my sake as much as theirs, haha).
• Expose them to great stories, music, and art - this is one that I have not been particularly thoughtful about.  We do read a lot and listen to music a lot, but I've been as happy for them to read Pinkalicious as the classics, and for them to listen to K-Love rather than Bach.  And while I do think there's room for "twaddle" (the name the author gives to art that won't stand the test of time) and I feel like my kids like twaddle much more than the kids that this author has apparently worked with, I do think that regular and thoughtful exposure to the great works is an important part of seeing what true beauty consists of, and what we can aspire to.  
• Go light in talking at them - the ideas is that they should have lots of room to ask questions and come up with their own conclusions.  Kenny is good at this; I have room for improvement here.
• Give them lots of time to play and explore and create art - We do have some art drawers with materials for the kids to draw and cut and paste, and they all very much use this as an outlet for their creativity.  Again, the main challenge here is time during the school week, but they make good use of this during their free play hours. 
• Spend lots of time outside - We are great about this during the warm months and terrible about it during the cold months.  I have it as an ongoing resolution to stock up on really good cold weather gear and learn a cold weather activity (we live next to the Sierra Nevadas for pete's sake), but so far that hasn't happened.  But in the warm months, we do hikes and lake days as much as I can possibly cram it into the schedule.  
• Spiritual instruction - One of my favorite things about our current church is that they have an amazing children's program, so they are getting good instruction on Sundays and Wednesdays at church.  I also try to include the kids in what I'm doing in my own spiritual life - Zoey and I memorize verses together, we all listen to KLove together, we pray together, etc.  We don't sit down and have hour long lessons, but we try to incorporate our faith into regular checkpoints of every day.  
• Foster an environment rich in love, support, valuing them, and stimulating them - This is certainly what we aspire to - I fail to meet the gold standard on these all the time, but I hope my kids are getting at least some of this every day.

Whew, this blog ended up being longer than I had planned!  Good on you if you made it to the end!  I love these ideas for how to structure and prioritize what my kids do with their free hours.  Would you add anything to this list?