Nevada Caucus Official: Both Parties Need to Eliminate ‘Horrendous’ Caucuses

Nevada Caucus Official: Both Parties Need to Eliminate ‘Horrendous’ Caucuses

With the Nevada Democratic caucuses set for next Saturday, CNN’s Victor Blackwell interviewed a caucus site leader who voiced concerns over apparent faults in the process which include data gathering tools.

Seth Morrison said he is encouraging early voting because it would “minimize many of the risks” that accompany the process of reporting results, which he says requires the use of an “untested software tool.”

“We have had a lot of training on the broad process,” Morrison explained, “but we have never seen or handled this tool. They keep telling us as early as last night, ‘We will show it to you when it is ready.'”

The conversation then shifted to the type of paper ballots the state is using for early voting, which begins today.

“There are people who would go and rank their choices on a ballot, hand it over to the party, and have no idea next week who they actually voted for?” Blackwell asked.

“Will they remember what they wrote down or not, that I can’t answer for,” Morrison said.

“It’s not that if you remember if you wrote it down,” Blackwell responded. “I don’t know if my first choice was viable in the first ballot or if you jumped to my third choice because that person wasn’t viable. If I’m giving you five names, I don’t know who was viable at what point. That seems like it would be a constitutional issue if I vote and I don’t know who actually has the vote.”

“I think what this really proves is that caucuses are horrendous and that state parties which have no training, no skill, no expertise in running elections should not be running elections,” Morrison said. “The caucus process is flawed. You can find a lot of holes in it and both parties really need to really eliminate it.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.

William Vaillancourt

William Vaillancourt is a writer and editor from New Hampshire whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, The Progressive, Slate and Areo Magazine, among other places. He holds a BA in Political Science and History from Boston University.

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