DAVENPORT, Iowa — “So if you’re with pineapple the first round, and there are enough voters, do pineapples become viable and you can no longer change to blueberries?” a man at the table near me asked.
We were in a room full of trainees for the Iowa presidential caucus that would occur in 19 days. People arrived for the training session from all over the state; I had driven an hour from my hometown.
The Iowa caucus is not a simple exercise — it requires 1,678 gyms, churches, libraries and schools across the state. Each location executes a complicated choreography in which hundreds of people migrate around a room to aggregate in their candidate’s corner. Their presence is their vote.
At our training session at the Davenport Public Library, we practiced navigating the chaos by using fruits as stand-ins for the Democratic candidates. Each fruit contender had its own display table, complete with produce props: oranges, apples, blueberries and tomatoes. One table contained a pineapple, meant to represent undecided voters.
During the caucus vote, there is a first round, where people walk around a large room and stand in their candidate’s corner. Then, after everyone is tallied, candidates without a 15 percent of the total voters present are swiftly removed from the caucus ballot. Their voters are forced to quickly pick another candidate.
The community activist Maria Bribriesco cued us to begin. At first, people gravitated toward the blueberries, which had enticed us with promises of edible samples. Ms. Bribriesco counted us. Tomatoes were out.
People who clustered around the pineapple wanted to know if they could stand in the undecided corner in the first round of the caucus and then choose a candidate during the second round. That way they could select from a whittled-down slate. (If there are too many undecided people after the first round, caucus guidelines state that they can’t leave the group).
Twenty-five of the 35 people at the training session had been to an Iowa caucus, but even some of the more experienced ones were confused.
A woman sitting next to me told me that she had been to the Democratic caucus in 2016, in which voters chose between Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley and Bernie Sanders. She came back for the training, because “you forget,” she said.
There are so many rules, as well as new updates for 2020. Be in line before 7 p.m. or you won’t be allowed to enter. Iowans had to preregister by mid-January if they wanted to vote in the caucus while out of- state. Voters have to stay long enough at the caucus, sometimes more than three hours, to be counted. Fortunately, the training lasted only two and a half hours.
“We set it up intentionally to be chaotic because this is going to happen,” Ms. Bribriesco said.
We had started the evening with a practice run for the Republican primary, in which voters mark who they want to run as the official G.O.P. candidate, (this part was uneventful, and ended quickly).
Then the other guide, Emiliano Martinez of the Iowa Democrats, gave a slide show presentation that offered an overview of the caucus. Each slide was full of lingo like “viable,” “locking in” and “alignment.”
Ms. Bribriesco said the hardest part is figuring out the math. Precinct-specific calculations determine whether or not your candidate will get a state-level delegate vote.
Delegates then vote for that candidate at the Democratic National Convention in July to determine the national party nominee. If there are three delegates and 35 people in your precinct, how many people do you need in your candidate’s group to gain one of Iowa’s 41 delegate votes?
Mr. Martinez pulled out his phone to do the calculation while reassuring us that when the real caucus day came, the precinct captains and chairs would check the numbers.
As we sat and tried to follow, the women around me discussed the rules. Are you allowed to leave in the middle of the caucus to go to the bathroom? What happens when there’s a tie? (The answers to these questions were not clear).
If you don’t know the math of how many voters each candidate needs to gain a delegate’s vote, and you don’t know which candidate you want, it’s extremely difficult to be strategic.
“But if it’s too much like a primary, we lose our first-in-the-nation status,” Ms. Bribriesco said when I asked her if the Democratic caucus process needed to change. She spoke positively of it all despite the fact that this year, the caucus site she will attend in Bettendorf will include 12 precincts packed into the Quad Cities Waterfront Convention Center.
Kathy Laird from Bettendorf (who happens to be Ms. Bribriesco’s cousin) recalled that in 2016, she had chosen Mr. O’Malley during the first round but had to choose between Mr. Sanders or Mrs. Clinton after Mr. O’Malley didn’t gain enough voters and was ousted from the ballot. The four Iowans in the O’Malley group were bombarded by supporters for the other candidates trying to convince them to join. Usually, voters get around 15 minutes to decide. But things would be different this year, with 12 candidates to choose from. She expects pure chaos to reign.
In the last election cycle, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders were almost exactly matched — with the tip to Mrs. Clinton by a 0.3 percent margin — and in individual precinct counts, numbers were rounded up and down to determine whether or not someone receives a delegate vote. How can we trust the Iowa indicator?
Ms. Bribriesco said that in 2016, getting a total head count for each candidate was like “herding cats.” This year, at least, there are paper ballots to keep track of the number of people in each candidate’s corner. This way, people can leave after the first round.
Some precincts, we learned, would flip a coin or draw straws to break a tie. It was disillusioning to hear that some delegate votes were left up to chance, given how close the caucus was last time — even if now most people agree that the luck of the draw couldn’t have changed the outcome of 2016.
Two newcomers to the party at the caucus training, the former registered Republican Dave Scott from Bettendorf and his spouse, want to beat President Trump, even if it means putting a Democrat in the house.
“I still want to be in the process. If you don’t vote you have no say,” he said.
The Democratic caucus, to him, seems much more frantic than the Republican one. Still, Mr. Scott wanted to be there.
“How can you complain if you didn’t participate?” he said.
Shirley Wang (@shirleyshirlw) is a freelance writer based in Iowa City.
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