What Happens at a Precinct Caucus?

Video Transcript

"Hi this is Bill Scher from liberaloasis.com. What happens at a precinct caucus? Well we talk about the Presidential primaries, but in fact we have both Presidential primaries and Presidential caucuses. And it is up to each individual state and the party in that state, which system they want to use to choose the Presidential nominees, or the preference for Presidential nominee of the people in that state. A caucus is generally a more time intensive process than a Presidential primary, which is like a regular election. You go into a voting booth, you cast your ballot and you leave. A Presidential caucus is more like a meeting, and it takes a longer period of time, and it tends to other matters that are relevant to the party. It tends to have in one sense a smaller participation, but also to ensure that it's the folks that involved in that political party making that decision which person is going to be representative of that party in the general election. The other advantage of a caucus system to a primary system is that the states political party pays for the caucus, as opposed to a primary, which is paid by all states taxpayers. So it's a lower cost way to decide which person will represent that party, and parties tend to like it because it helps them build party membership. So if you were wondering why people choose that system over a more largely participated Presidential primary, that's generally the reason why."