Iowa: how the Demo caucuses work
The Washington Post reports: Training for the Iowa caucuses combines several of the miseries of adolescence, like studying for a driver's license and an algebra test and the SAT -- only this time in the company of cheerful, middle-aged Iowans in a senior citizens home. ...
Much has been written about the Democratic caucuses and how they work -- how they're not like the primaries of other states, how you have to show up and stand in a corner for your candidate and then maybe stand in another corner if your candidate isn't "viable" (meaning, said candidate doesn't have at least 15 percent support among people in the room). And how each of the 1,781 precincts has a different number of delegates to award, and the number of delegates a candidate gets is proportional to the number of people who show up at a high school gym on a freezing night in January to stand in corners.
Hence the crazy math.
And we haven't even gotten to the various envelopes. And the filling in of bubbles. And the pink and yellow forms. And the fact that, once in a while, there's a tie, so folks have to toss a coin. -- Caucus Math 101: Bring a Calculator - washingtonpost.com