Iowa: can/will college kids actually in the caucus?
Michael Scherer writes on Salon's '08 Roadies blog: The clock is ticking on the Iowa caucuses, with just 22 days before zero hour, which means it's time to address the ever-present specter of electoral fraud. For decades, the Iowa caucuses have been relatively clean affairs, unlike in South Carolina, where muck rules. In part, this has to do with the process itself, which is so Byzantine that for Democrats it looks more like musical chairs than voting. (For those who want to understand how it works, see here and here.)
But there is a bad moon rising. For several weeks now, David Yepsen, the reigning dean of the Iowa political press, has been writing columns that portend evil on the horizon. At the end of November, he wrote a column titled "The Illinois Caucus," which led with these ominous words:
Barack Obama's campaign is telling Iowa college students they can caucus for him even if they aren't from Iowa. His campaign offers that advice in a brochure being distributed on college campuses in the state. A spokesman said it's legal and that 50,000 of the fliers are being distributed. The brochure says: "If you are not from Iowa, you can come back for the Iowa caucus and caucus in your college neighborhood."
Sounds scary and outrageous, right? It's not. Iowa law is very clear. Out-of-state students attending Iowa schools are allowed to caucus, as long as they don't also vote or caucus in their home state. Never mind what the "spokesman said." But this fact did not assuage Yepsen. He argues that the law is not the point. "These are the Iowa caucuses," he continues. "Asking people who are 'not from Iowa' to participate in them changes the nature of the event." -- '08 Roadies - Salon