Iowa Democrats keep caucus votes secret
Gilbert Cranberg, a former editor of the editorial page of The Des
Moines Register; Herb Strentz, a former executive secretary of Iowa’s
Freedom of Information Council; and Glenn Roberts, a former director of
research for The Register explain how Iowa Democrats shun public disclosure of voter
preferences at their caucuses — something not generally reported by the
press or understood by the public.
An early order of business in
each Democratic precinct caucus in Iowa is a count of the candidate
preferences of the attendees. For all practical purposes, this is just
what the polls try to measure. But Iowa Democrats keep the data hidden.
The one-person, one-vote results from each caucus are snail-mailed to
party headquarters and placed in a database, never disclosed to the
press or made available for inspection.
Read the whole op-ed at The New York Times.