Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe called for an end to caucusing after Iowa Democrats botched the results on Monday night.
McAuliffe, who was chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 2001 to 2005, said he doesn’t believe Iowa can be trusted to hold the first-in-the-nation elections in 2024 after the state party took several days to deliver results. He argued that the caucus system is not a fair, democratic way of electing leaders.
“This is inexcusable — what happened on Monday night,” McAuliffe said on CNN on Friday.
“I have long-time called for the end of caucuses. They are not democratic processes,” McAuliffe explained, noting that caucuses typically have a proportionally low turnout because the meetings are at a set time when not everyone can attend and the caucus can last several hours.
“I like primaries,” McAuliffe said. “You go in. You vote. You leave. You make it simple.”
McAuliffe also targeted the state of Iowa. He argued that Iowa does not have a racially diverse population and said it is not representative of the Democratic Party, an argument several Democrats have made. He explained, “You have the Democratic Party, which gets support from the African American community 95% of the time. 70% of Hispanics support our party. And yet, they’re not represented in the first two contests.”
He said the failure of Iowa Democrats to provide trusted results was the final straw for the first-in-the-nation state. “We’re trying to take on Donald Trump, and we’re trying to say we can run the government. And yet, we can’t count 170,000 votes. We’re just playing on Trump’s turf, which we should never cede.”
“The bigger, broader issue is we need to start with states that are representative of who our party is: the African American community, the Hispanic community, and that’s not what we have today,” McAuliffe said. “I did what I could as chair to move states up to be representative, but we’ve got to move forward.”
When he was chairman, McAuliffe argued that Nevada, Arizona, Michigan, or South Carolina should hold the first contests of the election. President Trump, however, has vowed to fight for Iowa to keep its position in the election season, calling the caucuses an “important tradition.”
The Associated Press was unable to declare a winner in Iowa, though the state party claimed that Pete Buttigieg held a thin lead over Bernie Sanders. Current DNC Chairman Tom Perez has called for a recanvass to confirm the final vote totals, something McAuliffe does not support.
