Did you know...?

I knew the Iowa caucuses are not like your normal primary where you just go and vote. But I didn't know it was this complicated. Excerpts:

Basically, the Iowa caucuses are so intricately and undemocratically structured that there is not one clear count for the press to focus on. There aren't even two clear counts. Or three! There are four possible counts. In the chronological order they occur on caucus night, they are:

1) The entrance poll taken under the auspices of a six large news organizations--call them Big Press--and their group, the National Election Pool. This completely unofficial count simply questions caucus-goers as they enter the caucuses at 6:30 in the evening.

2) The "pre-viability" count: Caucusers then sit through tedious minor issues and speeches before they finally divide up into groups supporting various candidates. If a candidate gets less than about 15 percent of the vote--or higher in some caucuses, as determined by to (needless to say) a complicated formula--that candidate's supporters are declared "non-viable" and must disperse. But for a brief, shining moment, before this "non-viability" is declared, the various groupings give a clear idea of the actual preferences of caucus-goers.

3) The "realigned" or post-viability count: Then the caucusers in non-viable groups go to their second choices, or to an "undecided" group. or to the "viable" candidate whose success will most screw the candidate they want to beat. Once all the non-viable candidates' votes have been vaporized and all the remaining groups are big enough to pass muster, you get another count--which is then immediately forgotten, because it is only used as the basis for calculating the delegate count.

4) The delegate count is derived from the realigned count --#3--but isn't necessarily an exact reflection thanks to yet more arcane rules--like the one requiring that every "viable" candidate get one delegate, or a rule penalizing precincts with low turnouts in previous years.