Demagogue

In a few posts early last year, I argued that it turns representative democracy on its head to give Iowa and New Hampshire such inordinate power in the presidential nominating process. Both states are disproportionately non-urban. Iowa has roughly one-fifth as many racial and ethnic minorities as the nation as a whole. New Hampshire's electorate fails even more miserably at exemplifying the great American "melting pot."

Writing in today's Washington Post, Peter Beinart has come up with a few more reasons why Iowa is undeserving of its first-out-of-the-gate status -- one of which I find persuasive:

In a primary, people can vote all day. But in Iowa, you must arrive at your precinct caucus site at exactly 6:30 p.m. and stay for several hours, which virtually bars people who work at night.

There are no absentee ballots, and voting is not secret .... Democrats generally believe in making it easy to vote. But in Iowa, voting is comparatively difficult. And that difficulty is reflected in the percentage of people who participate: In both 2000 and 2004, roughly 50 percent of registered Democrats cast ballots in the New Hampshire primary. In the Iowa caucuses, it was between 10 and 20 percent.