Breanna Zumbrunnen

Part 1:
The Iowa caucus is crucial to determining the next president of the

United States.

Presidential nominees in both major parties are selected by delegates, not by

voters. Before delegates can do this, the delegates (starting in Iowa) must be

selected in each state. This is what the legislative caucus is for. There are

about 3 million people in Iowa, which is less than 1% of the population, but

the Iowa caucus are very important simply because they come (rst.

Iowa is broken up into 1,681 precincts, and each of these hold their

own caucus. Both caucuses; one being a Democratic and the other being a

Republican are held in a large meeting space. The republican caucus is

similar to normal voting and relatively straightforward. The (rst step in the

republican caucus is that each of the representatives for each candidate

gives a speech to gain supporters. One the speech is over, everyone in the

room will select their preferred candidate on a piece of paper. These votes

are then collected and tallied.

The democratic caucuses are much more complicated than the

republican. A precinct captain gathers everyone into a large room and tallies

up the number of people there. Once a head count is accounted for, the

crowd then divides into preference groups based on the people who agree

with one another. This allows everyone else to see who you support; unlike a

normal election. Next, there is a viability threshold. Each group must

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convince others to join their group to increase their percentage. If a group

does not reach 15%, you can either leave the meeting or join another group.

Once delegates are selected, the party’s nominees are sent to the next

phase of the process.

Breanna Zumbrunnen
 Breanna Zumbrunnen

Part 3:

Through my use of the di5erent voting methods, I determined that

Marco Rubio was the best (t to be the winner using fairness criteria. The (rst

method, “Plurality Method”; I looked at the chart and noticed Donald Trump

had the most (rst place votes, but he did not have the most overall votes.

The second Method I tried, the “Runo5 Method”; I removed the least amount

of (rst place voters from the chart and the winner was Ted Cruz. Again, Ted

had the most (rst place votes, but not the most overall votes. Finally on the

last few methods I used, “Borda Count” and “Copeland’s Method”, I was able

to get a better count of everyone’s vote. Marco Rubio had won both voting
 Breanna Zumbrunnen

methods. These methods allowed the candidates to get all their votes tallied,

not just their (rst-place votes.