An Iowan's 2-cents...

Sorry, this is about a day late, but I wanted to provide my FIRST HAND comments about the Iowa Caucus. Obviously, I can only speak about my voting location.

First, there have been a lot of questions over the general format, so here’s how it played out in my county:

All county precincts met in a central location (our big central town’s high school auditorium). First, updates were given about local republican candidates running for local and state offices, and some of the local candidates gave speeches. Then they passed around a donation box for the local GOP. Then, each presidential candidate was represented by a speaker who got 2 minutes to address everyone. After the speeches, each precinct was sent to different rooms in the high school (my county has about 20 precincts, and my precinct had the biggest turnout with about 100 people). Once gathered, our precinct nominated 2 people to count the vote. Additionally, one supporter of each candidate was given the opportunity to oversea the tallying. A Ron Paul supporter was the only one who took them up on this offer. The ballots were then passed out and everyone put their completed ballot in the big empty popcorn box in the center of the room. The votes were counted, announced, and reported. All in all, it was very standard. As I posted in another thread, it is the DEMOCRATIC caucus that is much more complicated and open to manipulation.

Here are my comments and opinions.

1. ANYONE, and I mean ANYONE, could vote. They tried to have people check in at the door before the voting, but that was crazy as a lot of the people were not on the registered voters list. If not on the list, you just had to fill out a new registration form and you were allowed to go and vote (an anonymous ballot). The form was not even checked, so even if you were from out of state, you could fill out the registration with a bunch of fake info, and they would never know until way after your vote was cast and counted.

I don’t think this was a major factor, and if anything it probably helped Ron Paul. However, if you expect Ron Paul to do a lot better in states that are open to independents or open to anyone, this probably won’t make a big difference…because Iowa was essentially open to anyone.

2. While waiting in line, I saw the name Ron Paul (either on buttons or stickers or signs) probably 5 to 1 compared to all other candidates combined. However, he only got 12% in our county, and based on the applause during the speeches, I have NO reason to suspect that this was not accurate. This reinforces what we already know: his supporters have 10 times the passion, but simply lacked in numbers.

3. I was stunned that Thompson and McCain beat Paul state-wide. Paul came in 3rd in my county (which is fairly rural), so I assumed he would only do better in the population centers. However, neighboring counties (also rural) had higher relative support for Thompson and McCain. My perception is that THIRD PLACE was absolutely possible…see below…

4. Ron Paul NEVER went out into the state. He spent a few days in Des Moines and Cedar Rapids and visited our 2 major state universities, but never out into the smaller towns for local speeches. I think this was a HUGE mistake. Many Iowans will not vote for a candidate unless the candidate comes to speak at their home town. If he had just traveled from town to town for even 3 or 4 days, he could have made a HUGE difference. In 4 days of this, he could have probably doubled or tripled his exposure in the state, and easily covered the ground on McCain and Thompson for a third-place finish. BTW, Thompson spent a solid 2 weeks going from town to town, and barely beat Paul. Imagine if Paul had done that for 3-4 days.

5. Campaign TV and radio ads are NON-STOP in the weeks prior to the caucus…from ALL candidates. We all just become numb to them. If your reaction to watching the Ron Paul TV ads on youtube was that they were boring…imagine how boring they are to people who are barraged with campaign ads 24/7!!! When you’re barraged by ads, quantity doesn’t help (RP’s ads were on just as much as others). The most important thing is that the ads are UNIQUE!!! Unfortunately, the Ron Paul ads were perfectly effective at BLENDING-IN and being completely UNNOTICED. What a shame. I guarantee that New Hampshire and South Carolina are also being bombarded by ads right now, so I would urge everyone to contact the campaign and try to get them to air more unique ads (like the youtube debate contest ads that weren’t chosen). They are at least a little interesting.

6. Barack Obama’s turnout from anti-war independents was huge! Ron Paul’s was fair. I think the best thing that can happen, is for the Democratic contest to end SOON. Then any later states’ independents will only have the option of voting for RON PAUL!

That’s it. Good luck New Hampshire!