Six different Iowa Caucus voting locations utilized an outdated technique to determine which Democratic candidate won each district. The final vote for Democrats was almost a dead tie, with 49.8 percent for former Sen. Hillary Clinton and 49.6 percent for Sen. Bernie Sanders according to https//www.idpcaucuses.com. To make a decision, hosts of six caucus sites were required to flip a coin.
Again, the numbers were so close that six represented districts in Iowa had to flip coins to help determine one of our presidential candidates for the 2016 election.
Many have said it’s suspicious that, with a 1.6 percent chance of probability, every single coin flip went in favor of Clinton. Social media users throughout the night said that votes in tied districts were recounted several times until a tie was announced. This resulted in the flipping of a coin. According to many social media sources, each time, Clinton won.
Though CNN claimed that, in fact, five of these coin flips went to Sanders (without citing much solid information), the winning and losing of coin flips isn’t the problem.
The problem is that there are coin flips at all.
Dwindling Voter Turnout for Iowa Caucuses
The issue of low voter turnout has been a testament to the truth behind America’s democracy. If fewer people care about politics, fewer people show up. When fewer people show up, fewer people care about politics.
According to www.electproject.org, 171,109 Democrats voted in the Iowa Caucus.
In an article on www.bustle.com, the Democratic party saw a mere 25,000 Democrats come out for the caucus in 2012. (One Leader staff member would like to note that low turnout in the Democratic race in 2012 was the result of an uncontested primary against incumbent Obama.) In 2008, that number was up at 239,000.
Here’s some perspective: Over 700,000 Democrats are registered to vote, and over 3 million people live in Iowa.
People have their reasons for why they don’t vote, sure. Some people are uninformed about candidates’ policies and agendas. Some people are too informed and can’t make a decision that properly fits them. Some people just don’t like politics. Most people who are registered who don’t vote don’t have the time to spend on a Monday.
There’s a problem with this. Even if you don’t like politics, or even if you’re undereducated, or even if you don’t have time, your silence prevents the country from truly operating under the conditions its citizens deem most appropriate.
This isn’t your fault, however. It’s difficult, in the 2016 political game of media buyouts, super PACs and confusing political terminology, to form an educated political position. But when less than a third of the country votes in each election, one must ask if the U.S. can consider itself a true democracy.
And it’s not just Iowa, either. Millions of registered Americans do not vote in each electoral year; millions of people’s beliefs are not accounted for; the potential exists for millions of people’s votes to be accounted for by a coin flip.
Possible Solutions to the Problem
We are in an unprecedented age of technology. New inventions, conveniences and laws are produced or updated on a monthly, sometimes daily, basis. Surely at this point there are other options than relying on George Washington’s face (or lack thereof) to make our political decisions.
Here are some of those options:
In the year 2016, people carry small communication boxes in their pockets at all times. These devices have wireless Internet access almost everywhere. Facebook and Twitter messages are almost more common than face-to-face interaction.
Yet, instead of voting locations being able to contact potential voters in the case of a tie, the rules indicate one must flip a coin.
What if, instead of a coin toss, hosts were able to call, email or message potential voters in case of a tie? This would ensure that, in the case of a tie, the citizens of the United States (or Iowa, at least) are somehow represented.
One may say, “Hey! It’s my right to vote or to not vote. You can’t call me up and tell me what to do!”
Well, hold on there. Your reasons not to vote are your own, and they’re valid. So if you’re unavailable, voting hosts would call the next person. Surely, out of the hundreds of thousands of registered voters who don’t attend the primary election, at least a few hundred would be willing to voice their contribution to the future of our nation.
The flaw with this, however, is many people don’t want to tell someone else who they’re voting for, or don’t trust other people enough to tell them their votes. It’s upsetting that we live in a country where people trust coins more than they trust their fellow Americans.
Another option is to change the day of the week upon which caucuses are held. Caucuses are held almost primarily on Mondays, while primaries are usually on Tuesdays. Monday generally starts the work weeks and school weeks for many Americans, and they don’t have time to attend the caucus because of this.
If all voting was changed to Saturday or even Sunday (which would be ideal), then voter turnout would increase. If voter turnout was increased, there would be less likelihood that the results would be tied.
In addition, this would ensure more people could work at election and caucus sites. More people working means a lower margin of human error, quicker result times and a more balanced volunteer representation of candidates.
This would also provide an opportunity for parents to teach their children how to vote. Another reason people (more specifically, millennials) don’t vote is because they don’t know how to. Many of us are afraid that we’ll look dumb for asking questions, and we’re then discouraged from participating.
If parents had the opportunity to bring their children with them, and those children were raised learning how to vote, there’s a chance that this, too, would increase voter turnout, decreasing the necessity to use the archaic method of a coin flip.
Our final option, and potentially the most effective for preventing coin flips or providing more opportunity for people to vote: online voting.
What better way to ensure privacy and to digress from the mishandling of votes than to make it electronic? With a lower margin of human error (or, potentially, zero margin for human error) and a great ease of access, there’s almost no reason we haven’t made the switch to electronically-based voting systems.
Sure, it may take time to implement something so complex. However, it will take less time in the long run. Hundreds of thousands of people who have to take hours counting votes would simply be able to rely on a seemingly infallible system that guarantees voter privacy.
There are many options Americans could implement. We do, however, generally opt for the tendency to leave well enough alone. “If something’s broke, don’t fix it” seems to be the easiest motto for Americans to live by.
When “easy” starts to conflict with “infringing on the validity of American voters,” a larger issue is present — an issue worth more than 25 cents.