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Posted
Monday, January 14, 2008 6:19 PM
| By
Christopher Beam
The lawsuit filed
by a Nevada
teachers’ union on Friday to keep Vegas Strip workers (the place, not the
profession) from caucusing in their workplaces is making a lot of people look
and sound crazy. But hey, that’s a caucus.
The main reason for the rage: The lawsuit is transparently
political. The Nevada State Education Association hasn’t endorsed a
candidate yet, but many of its leaders openly support Hillary Clinton. Now that the
Culinary Workers union has endorsed Barack Obama, the nine new “At-Large”
precincts set up in Vegas hotels—where a vast number of culinary workers will
likely turn out—threaten Clinton’s
prospects. The plaintiffs claim that these caucus-goers would have
disproportionate influence compared to Nevadans who caucus in their home
districts. But seeing as they never complained about this fact until the Culinary
Workers endorsed Obama, their last-minute objection looks suspect.
Obama practically turned it into a civil rights issue:
“Are we going to let a bunch of lawyers try to prevent us from bringing about
change in America?”
A group of Nevada
teachers agreed
with him, firing off an angry letter to their own union asking it to drop the
suit.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton weighed
in in the name of fairness: “I think the rules ought to be the same for
everyone. I question why you would ever have a temporary caucus site and limit
to a certain kind of workers.”
But even if the lawsuit is political, that doesn’t mean it’s
wrong. The plaintiffs’ main contention—that voters in at-large precincts will
have more influence than other Nevadans—may well be accurate. All Nevada precincts
allocate one delegate per 50 registered voters; the at-large precincts would
likely allocate more than that, according to the lawsuit (PDF here).
But then again, caucus math is arbitrary in the first place. Who came up with the
15 percent viability requirement? Why hold the caucus at 11 a.m., instead of
after dinner? Why not create at-large precincts all over the state, not just on the Strip?
The whole system is so random that this deviation from sanity seems no more
offensive than any of the others. And seeing as this is Nevada's maiden voyage with the caucus system, there's no precedent. Bon voyage!