Des Moines (United States) (AFP) – With bursts of laughter, a faulty megaphone, cries of exasperation and some dance steps, US Democrats took their time Monday evening to kick off the election season with a curious voting system: the Iowa caucuses.
Among the nearly 1,700 sites at which they gathered in the first state to select its Democratic nominee was a high school in Des Moines.
Voters who were grouped behind the banner of their favored candidate yelled that they couldn’t hear anything when an official tried to explain the voting rules.
“Please be patient. This is democracy,” an organizer said, reassuringly, before starting to count the number of voters present on a basketball court at Abraham Lincoln High School.
Voters in this rural state, near the center of the country, physically demonstrate their candidate choice by standing with others who support him or her.
If the candidate — there are 11 in the Democratic contest to go up against President Donald Trump in November — doesn’t get 15 percent support, the followers can back another in a second round.
It’s a process that takes time.
But not enough to discourage Lane and Michelle Mose, a thirty-something couple who arrived with their three daughters aged four, two and six months.
Usually, the little ones go to bed at 7:30 pm, but on this night, at 8:00 pm — one hour after the official start of the Iowa caucus — they were still awaiting the first round, armed with snacks and coloring books.
They had come to support far-left Senator Bernie Sanders, who leads in polls throughout Iowa.
“I think anybody can beat Donald Trump, but I think Bernie has the best chance,” Lane said.
Results would come much later in the night.
“Come on down to Bernie. Feel the Beeeeeeeern,” called an organizer, laughing, for the self-described democratic socialist.
Mike Wieskamp, a “precinct captain”, was organizing the corner for supporters of former vice president Joe Biden, who is polling behind Sanders in Iowa but leading nationally.
Wearing a T-shirt and a Biden badge, Wieskamp said things were proceeding in a “cordial” way so far.
“So far everybody is kind of just keeping to their space,” he said. “No one’s getting, you know unruly yet.”
But when it comes to pulling in supporters in a second round, it could get “a little testy maybe.”
Dancing to Dolly Parton’s song “9 to 5”, the theme song of progressive Senator Elizabeth Warren, US Navy veteran Megan Kee, 69, said she was “enthusiastic” for fourth-place Warren.
“There’s two rounds. As long as we get close to the 15 percent, we’ll round up enough” to reach the threshold on the second round, Kee said.
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