Iowa's Dark Art of Caucusing Is Turning a Bit More Public

[Dover]

By CARL HULSE

January 13, 2004


DES MOINES, Jan. 12 — As Paulee Lipsman conducted a lunchtime primer on the Iowa caucuses for 100 workers at the Pioneer seed company headquarters near here, she sketched out a problem in caucus math, the intricate formula for allotting delegates to presidential candidates at the 1,993 precinct meetings to be held around the state next Monday evening.

By the time Ms. Lipsman had finished, her poster-size work sheet looked like an exercise in higher algebra. Her audience looked dazed. "It sounds more complicated than it is," Ms. Lipsman, a local Democratic expert in the intricacies of the system Iowa employs to rate the presidential primary field, told them.

To the uninitiated, the inner workings of the Iowa caucuses can be as mysterious as the rites of a secret society. No ballots are punched, all voting is public, politicking on-site is at the heart of the process and delegates can be won with a coin toss...cont'd

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/13/politics/campaigns/13CAUC.html?8br