Sending Love to Iowa

I logged onto my iPad yesterday morning wondering how the Iowa caucuses had gone and spent a lively couple of hours reading news articles about how it all went down. I, along with most people, I guess, was expecting to see results first thing, and when I read about the app problem that prevented results from getting through, I figured it would be sometime in the afternoon, at the longest, before we heard anything. Election glitches are nothing new.

In the meantime, I read the news while trying to steer as clear as I could of pundits talking about “what’s broken” and “what a big mess everything is.” Admittedly, I was impatient to find out who had won, but I had the advantage of not having been tuned in the evening before when the caucuses were actually taking place, so I didn’t experience the anxiety and confusion that had unfolded in Iowa in real time. Apparently, nerves were worn to a frazzle (and no wonder) all around as people had to rely on trying to call in their results the old-fashioned way, only to be met with long wait times and hang-ups.

I read words like “debacle” and “disaster” and saw opinions expressed about how we were seeing the beginning of the end of the caucus process in Iowa, and I have to admit: my feelings were rather different. Granted, I was at a remove from it all in time and space, but as I looked at the photos and watched the videos of Iowans taking part in one of our country’s most important participatory processes, that of choosing the person who may be our next president, I was, more than anything, moved.

I was moved by the excitement I could see in people’s faces, by the conscientiousness with which they patiently navigated the ins and outs of the system, by the diversity of the Iowans themselves—including one precinct with largely Muslim constituents—and by the very public nature of the process itself. Nothing hidden or secret there, just people very openly and matter-of-factly sorting themselves into groups to support their preferred candidates. You could actually see democracy at work, right in front of your eyes. I don’t remember the last time I was so touched by anything having to do with politics, but I didn’t have a single sarcastic thought while I was watching the people of Iowa caucus. What I was really thinking was “This is what democracy is all about, and how wonderful for the people of Iowa to get to lead the way.”

From this you will see that I am sharply at odds with the people who keep moaning about what a disaster it all was. The only disaster I saw was in the app that didn’t work, and with the paper ballots completed by the participants, there seems to be no way the outcome will be in doubt once it’s known. I was actually wishing our state had a caucus, because to me there was something fundamentally satisfying about watching people show up with their friends and neighbors and then publicly sort themselves, declaring their candidate preference in front of one and all. There was something sort of New England town hall-ish about it all, democracy with a small d, right down there at the grass roots level. I was (if you don’t mind if I express an old-fashioned thought) just plain proud.

I think it’s wise for the officials in Iowa to take their time about checking the results to make sure that it’s all done properly. While it’s frustrating, it will not prevent everyone from moving on to the next contest. If anything good can be said to come out of it, it is perhaps the fact that the problem with the app was discovered in time to prevent another state, possibly without the easy visibility of the caucus system, from finding itself in similar circumstances with inadequate backup.

Personally, I think it would be a shame if Iowa gave up its caucuses over a piece of software. You guys just keep on keepin’ on, no matter what the experts say. There’s too much genuine joy and excitement in the system you’ve got, and if you can get Wordplay (as cynical as I am sometimes) to say so, you must be doing something really special.