Former Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid called for an end to caucuses even while praising Nevada for pulling off a much more successful effort than Iowa.
“I am so proud of the Nevada Democratic Party, its talented staff, and the thousands of grassroots volunteers who have done so much hard work over the years to build this operation,” Reid, the state’s longtime senator, said in a statement. “We have the best state party in the country, and that was shown again this past week after another successful caucus that featured a historic four days of early voting with more than 10,000 new voter registrations.”
Reid went on to urge Democrats to adopt primaries in all states.
“With so much Democratic enthusiasm in Nevada, demonstrated again by the tremendous caucus turnout this year, I believe we should make the process of selecting our nominee even more accessible," he said. "That’s why I believe it’s time for the Democratic Party to move to primaries everywhere."
Reid says caucuses don’t work:
“All caucuses should be a thing of the past. They don’t work for a multitude of reasons,” he told The New York Times. Reid is single-handedly responsible for the Nevada caucuses going third in the primary schedule, according to the outlet.
“The party began to move away from caucuses during the aftermath of the nasty 2016 race between Hillary Clinton, the eventual nominee, and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont,” The Times noted. “After Mr. Sanders and his allies claimed he was cheated out of a caucus victory in Iowa because of irregularities in the reporting process, the Democratic National Committee incentivized caucus states to shift to primaries. Only Iowa, Nevada, North Dakota and Wyoming, along with three territories, are holding caucuses this year.”
Caucuses lead to errors:
The chairman of the Iowa Democratic Party resigned after errors marred the Iowa caucus results. Some errors still have not been fixed.
Though Nevada’s caucuses were far less dramatic than the disaster in Iowa, Pete Buttigieg’s campaign alleged that there were “irregularities” in the results showing him in third place.
The campaign issued a statement claiming there were “anomalies in the data” and that the results were “plagued with errors.”
