True history of the Iowa caucus

The tradition of the Iowa caucus is a long and storied one. The groundwork for the first major test of the Presidential process was laid by Native Americans who settled in the midwest after being shot at by settlers on the east coast. The very first caucus was held by the Algonquin tribe, to decide whether to fish on the north or south side of a lake, whose name and location has been lost to history. It is from the Algonquins that we derive the word "caucus." The Algonquins called it a "COS-QUS," which translated (roughly) means "room-thing." Like many modern-day Iowans, the Algonquins convened in their largest building in the center of their settlement. Those who wished to fish on the north side moved to the north side of the building; those who wished to fish on the south side moved to the south side of the building. The south won a decisive victory, but it would prove to be transient: the village would be massacred and destroyed by European settlers only minutes later.

Though the triumph of those early Algonquins was ephemeral, the tradition of the caucus that they had begun would live on. The very next year, at that very same place, European settlers "caucused" to determine whether to slaughter the Native Americans living west of slaughter the Native Americans living south of Iowa. Days of furious debate and vote after revote gave the settlers no clear consensus. The caucus threatened to tear the settlement apart until Governor James Wilshire brokered a compromise of the two sides and Iowans went on to slaughter both groups of Native Americans at once by luring them to a phony treaty-signing at what would later becomes Des Moines (French for "the slaughter-place").

The caucus faded from mainstream American consciousness shortly thereafter, until 1849, when Iowa's courts were overwhelmed by cases as men moving west to become prospectors caused many ruckuses throughout the state. The jury system soon proved to be insufficient to handle the new caseload, and Iowa's state legislature convened in an emergency session to deal with the crisis. Here is an excerpt from the resolution that was quickly passed and signed into law:

CONSIDERING that our great state's courts are not currently equipped to settle the many disputes that come through our great state's great courts' great doors

INSOMUCH AS our great courts are unable to find enough white male landowners to fill juryboxes to hear the cases of the influx of ruffians and ne'er-do-wells who have been streaming into our state for reasons sundry and various etc.

ACKNOWLEDGING that most of those white male landowners are illiterate and ignorant of even the most basic facts of law and the most basic tenants of what we call "morality"

RESOLVING that cases involving non-Iowans will be settled by getting a bunch of fat people together in an elementary school and having them mill around for a few hours, hustling them around like so much cattle and paying then them stand where we want them to stand

This method was practiced until the mid-1870s, when the Supreme Court ruled it "unprecedentedly unconstitutional," "outrageously immoral" and "seriously mind-fucking-blowingly ununderstandable."

But the Iowans would not part with their tradition so easily. A bill was introduced to Iowa's state legislature that would have reinstated the caucus for deciding small civil disputes (replacing the practice of standing on separate ends of the room with the more formal method of writing one's verdict on soiled cocktail napkins), but it was tabled when the entire population of Iowa was killed by dust storms of the Great Depression.

When FDR took office, one of the major tenants of his New Deal was providing incentives for citizens to move to the barren, unpopulated wastelands that had once been Iowa. He strongarmed Congress into amending the Constitution, restricting suffrage to citizens of Iowa only (white male landowning citizens, natch). However, that failed to spur population growth, so Roosevelt focused on creating thousands of new jobs in Iowa by peppering the state with Japanese internment camps. With the return of real-life humans came the return of the obscure caucus tradition, and it was quickly reinstated. The first resolution debated and decided by caucus would have changed the states name from "Iowa" to "Jap Prison-Land" (it failed by a margin of 52%-48%).

When the "smoke-filled rooms" of large national conventions were abolished, Iowa stepped forward with their caucus. Winning the Electoral Draft Lottery of 1951 because of their low standard-of-living, quality-of-life and general satisfaction and happiness ratings, the state won the privilege of hosting the first major event of the primary season, and they believed they would set a precedent by opting for a caucus. When no other state followed suit or even attempted to understand the strange process, Iowa bitterly refused to relinquish their spot at the beginning of the season, insisting that they deserved more say in American politics than any other state because, as then-governor Gray Jeffords said, "our mixture of overweight Christians, illiterate farmhands and homeless vagrants makes us the truest cross-section of America you'll find."

American history would have been incredibly different were it not for Iowa's caucuses (as if you had any doubt!). The Civil Rights Amendment had to be ratified by 2/3 of American states, and Iowa was poised to be the one that ensured its ultimate failure. Polling showed that a conventional election would have defeated the amendment soundly, some showing a difference as large as 70-30. But on the night of the caucus, it rained, and most Iowans stayed home, assuming that there were more than enough racists who would make their way out to Iowa's elementary school gymnasiums to defeat the bill. But not a single vote was recorded, and Iowa's abstention helped the Amendment squeak by and make its way into the Constitution. The remorseful population of Iowa promised themselves that they would never take their unique position in this American democracy for granted again. And they didn't, until 1988, when 25% of the state's Republicans voted for Pat Robertson.