Ins and outs of Minnesota caucusing, a party-run affair

A political strategist looking to find out where Hillary Clinton performed best in the Minnesota caucuses when she last ran for president in 2008 will have as many questions as answers.

Like, where are all the votes?

Data from the Secretary of State show zero votes for any candidate in 723 DFL precincts out of 4,122 that reported results in 2008, or 18 percent. Likewise, on the Republican side, large swaths of Minnesota precincts reported no results to the state office.

The explanation is simple, say current and former secretaries of state: Although results are eventually posted to the secretary of state's website, the caucuses are not state-run elections. They are run by the parties, which means the parties will hold the official vote tallies that determine which presidential candidates win delegates to the national political conventions.

"The whole process is based on trust," said Mark Ritchie, former secretary of state.

If this sounds like an opportunity for mischief, both parties say fear not. The competitive presidential contests on both sides and Minnesota's early spot on the nominating calendar mean unprecedented levels of scrutiny from both local and national media, political activists and operatives who will ferret out irregularities. Both parties say they have instituted rigorous systems to ensure a fair and accurate result.

"We're effectively running a statewide election through a volunteer organization," state GOP Party chairman Keith Downey acknowledged in an interview. "So we have substantially increased the controls and rigor of that process."

Republicans may double their 2008 turnout of about 65,000 voters, Downey said. For the first time, the presidential straw poll will be binding, allocating GOP delegates to the national convention based on who wins statewide and in each congressional district, upping the stakes even further for the state party.

To deal with all the new voters and the brighter spotlight, Downey said the party has instituted a system for ballot counting.

A convener will read from a script to create consistency across the more than 4,000 precincts, where Republicans will gather at 7 p.m. Tuesday. Once ballots are cast, they will be counted by tellers, a process that will be watched by official observers, and no doubt by other supporters for each candidate.

Once ballots are counted, they will be put in an envelope, and the convener, teller and observers will sign a document certifying results.

They will then be sent up to the district level, which will have an official tabulator, before going to the state party.

Based on the results, Republicans will allocate three delegates for each of the eight congressional districts, plus another 14 based on statewide results, for a total of 38 delegates of the 1,236 needed nationwide to win the GOP nomination.

Unlike the past, Downey said, Republicans now have a process for verification and documentation. So, if results are questioned or a recount required, party officials — under the watchful eye of competing campaigns — can examine paper ballots.

The DFL may face even more skepticism from some of its voters. Although the party is seen as one of the most politically organized in the country, party leaders, including DFL Chairman Ken Martin, are almost entirely aligned with Clinton, which has given rise to some distrust among supporters of her chief rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Clinton gave the state DFL $170,000, according to recent campaign finance reports. She has given money to more than 30 other state parties.

The Sanders campaign had no comment. Matt Barthelemy, a Sanders volunteer in Minneapolis' Whittier neighborhood, said he had concerns about obstacles to caucusing, especially among people of color and working-class voters who have jobs that will not allow them to attend. He is also concerned about Sanders' supporters who are unfamiliar with their caucus site and a process that is different from voting on Election Day.

Like the Republicans, the DFL has instituted a more disciplined process to collect, tabulate and verify votes, Martin said. He said that while he would be surprised if the DFL matched its record 2008 turnout of about 220,000 votes, the party will be ready if it happens.

Recount procedures mirror state law, Martin said.

The party will award 93 delegates to the national convention, where a candidate needs 2,383 to win the nomination. Of the Minnesota delegates, 50 will be apportioned according to victory in congressional districts, while 27 will be won statewide. The other 16 delegates are "super delegates," elected officials and party leaders who can vote their choice of candidate at the national convention, a form of delegate allocation that Democrats instituted in the 1980s to give party leaders a bigger voice in choosing the nominee.

In the face of all this arcane minutia and organizational undertaking, many Minnesotans ask, why not a simple primary?

A primary allows people to use an absentee ballot if they are out of state and to vote at their convenience all day, and the election is run by an elected servant of the people — the secretary of state.

Veterans of Minnesota politics bristle at this suggestion. To begin with, a statewide election costs a couple million dollars, said Beth Fraser, the former deputy secretary of state.

And, for the parties, the caucus is a volunteer bonanza. To run the caucus at more than 4,000 precincts requires about 10,000 volunteers for each party, who can be called upon again to knock on doors in the fall.

While the reassurances of party leaders may assuage Minnesotans skeptical of the caucus process, there's still the matter of those missing 2008 results.

Brian Melendez, who was the DFL Party chairman back then, said his best guess was that someone just didn't hand over the complete results to the Secretary of State, although that did not matter as long as the results wound up in the hands of the party, which is ultimately responsible for the results.

"If a precinct didn't report to the Secretary of State, we didn't chase them down, and apparently neither did the Secretary of State," said Melendez, who is no longer involved in party politics. "It was eight years ago and I honestly don't remember."

patrick.coolican@startribune.com• 651-925-5042