Democrats’ nominating shuffle still causing headaches

The change to the Democratic presidential nominating lineup continues to be a fiasco, and President Joe Biden’s re-election campaign could face an embarrassing start due to what Politico described last Thursday as a “bizarre predicament … of the president’s own making” due to his own advocacy for the new lineup.

A June 3 deadline looms for lawmakers in New Hampshire to move the date of their presidential primary to the Democratic National Committee’s new prescribed date. Should that deadline pass with no resolution, Biden could face an uncomfortable choice: Go rogue and campaign afoul of the new rules or follow the rules he pressed for and find his name left off the New Hampshire primary ballot.

New Hampshire’s legislative session is scheduled to adjourn on June 30th. But even if national Democrats give New Hampshire an extra month to resolve the issues that they themselves created, no one expects that New Hampshire’s GOP-controlled legislature will alter their state law — which requires that they hold their primary election before any other state holds its primary — to suit the desires of the DNC. It’s the latest indication that the shake-up to the Democratic nominating contest has caused more problems than it could ever hope to solve.

Those problems continue to extend to the state of Iowa. On May 3, the Iowa Democratic Party released their presidential delegate selection plan for 2024, in which they would continue with in-person precinct caucuses to conduct certain pieces of party business but conduct the presidential preference poll entirely by mail. It’s a well-meaning plan, crafted by state Democrats who will forever atone for the 2020 caucus meltdown, which, as I opined in November, wasn’t entirely of their own doing.

But as is par for the course with big DNC-led nominating changes, Iowa Democrats’ new plan could cause its own set of problems. In an attempt to stop the Democrats’ presidential nominating woes from affecting Iowa Republicans’ nominating contest, House File 716 was introduced in April by Republican State Rep. Bobby Kaufmann of Wilton. The original bill required that the caucuses be conducted entirely in person, and established a pre-caucus voter registration deadline.

70 DAYS? NO WAY

Kaufmann’s bill needed some fixing in order to be something other than … well, junk. The original version required any eligible caucusgoer to be a registered member of their party for at least 70 days prior to the caucus. That would have meant that anyone not registered with their political party by the last Monday in November of this year would have been blocked from participating in the Feb. 5, 2024 caucuses.

70 days is too steep of an ask, especially considering current election law. This is when readers should remember that caucuses and elections are two separate functions with two separate sets of rules. The more different they become, the more confusing they can get.

What caucuses and elections have in common is that state law requires that participation be limited to registered voters. Election laws in Iowa allow a voter to remain unregistered until the moment they arrive at their polling place, where they prove their identity and residency using a set of approved documents (most commonly a driver's license.) If Iowans are used to not being turned away from an election if they’re not registered when they walk in the door, they’re definitely not going to expect to be turned away from a February caucus if they didn’t meet a deadline from the previous November.

Caucuses already go a step further for voter registration requirements: State law says that to participate, one must specifically be registered as a member of the party whose caucus they wish to attend. But not all caucusgoers prefer to be permanently registered with their party.

INTENT OF REGISTRATION VARIES WITH VOTERS

My experience with registering voters, both as a longtime caucus volunteer and an election official, is that many think avoiding being permanently registered as a member of any political party will save them from the phone calls, text messages and political mailers that are sure to clutter mailboxes before a caucus or an election. It’s a respectable but largely futile effort because campaigns still compile data about voters and target those voters based in part on their registration patterns.

A voter who frequently changes their party registration could be perceived as a moderate or no-party voter who only leans a certain way. Campaigns and parties target those voters more, not less, than the voter who’s been registered at the same address with the same party for 20 years and voted reliably each election. At least, they do if they want to win.

Regardless of why a voter keeps or changes their party registration — a discussion in and of itself — the point is that they do. And requiring voters to register with their party a minimum 70 days in advance would see those who fail to do so turned away in droves at each precinct caucus. Which candidate would be hurt the worst by that in 2024? Possibly Donald Trump, whose base arguably includes the largest share of the previously “unpoliticked” who aren’t necessarily interested in being participating members of the GOP. Interestingly, Rep. Kaufmann is a paid adviser to the Trump campaign.

BAD BILL BECOMES GOOD

If its true that a 70-day advance registration requirement could hurt Trump at the caucus, it’s also true that removing that barrier could help him, which Kaufmann has denied as a motivation for introducing and passing HF716. Importantly, though, the final version of the bill was successfully amended to remove the 70-day registration rule. It was also amended to require in-person caucuses only if a party selects its delegates for the purpose of presidential nominating on the night of the caucuses. If Iowa Democrats want to select their presidential delegates later than the night of the caucuses, they will still be able to keep their proposed mail-in presidential preference plan.

IOWA, NEW HAMPSHIRE PLAY NICE … WE HOPE

If Iowa Republicans have a state government majority and a guarantee from national Republicans to keep their own first-in-the-nation caucuses, why then would Iowa Republicans feel the need to make changes to our laws? Simple — New Hampshire has laws, too. Just as Iowa’s laws state that Iowa must hold the nation’s first caucuses, New Hampshire law states that New Hampshire must hold the nation’s first presidential primaries. And if Iowa Democrats hold a contest that looks more like a primary than a caucus, New Hampshire will swoop in and hold their primaries before Iowa can hold its caucuses. That isn’t speculation — New Hampshire GOP chair Chris Ager shared a screenshot on Twitter of an email from New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlon confirming that “any change of the caucus format in Iowa that moves in the direction of a primary election” would “trigger New Hampshire’s law” to preserve their first-up primary position.

Will HF716, which still awaits Gov. Kim Reynolds’ signature, be enough to stave off further destruction of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses? We’ll see. In the meantime, questions linger for national Democrats’ nominating lineup beyond just Iowa and New Hampshire. The peachy February date offered to Georgia as a reward for supporting Biden in 2020 has so far been stonewalled by Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who is refusing to split Georgia’s primaries into two separate dates or move their Republican primaries up with the Democrats.

I don’t feel sorry for the DNC or the Biden campaign. They knew exactly what this shake-up could cause. They knew that their new lineup would conflict with laws in more than one state. They knew that several of those states would not be caught dead letting the DNC bully them into changing those laws. They knew that they would be pitting state parties against each other. They knew that they’d be putting candidates between a rock and a hard place by threatening them with being stripped of some of their delegates if they didn’t play by those stupid new rules. They did it all anyway, and nobody is better off for it. It’s a hell of a lot of hullabaloo — and largely for nothing.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com

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