What's the point?
By Evan Campbell
What is a Democratic/Republican Convention for? By Evan Campbell Every time the United States votes for a new president, a long process of elimination occurs to decide the candidate for each side. The process starts with the caucuses and primaries at the beginning of the election year. During these votes, delegates from every state are awarded to each candidate that wins that state’s vote. Those delegates go to a convention in a city selected by each political party to hold the convention. This year it happens to be Denver, Colorado for the Democratic convention and the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area of Minnesota for the Republican convention. At these locations all the delegates come together to select their party’s candidate for presidential office. Normally, the nation knows who the candidate is the nominee is before the convention; however, the convention is the political correct politically proper way to decide who the nomination will go to. But how do these delegates get selected to represent the candidate who wins in the primary?. The caucuses are a long process from precinct, to county, to state, and then the trip to the national convention. The process of voting in a caucus is different compared to the primary. Unlike a private primary, vote the caucus is strictly all Republican or all Democratic registered voters in a room talking about the issues each candidate stands on in their political party. When all the talking is done, a vote is cast to see who the delegates are going to be for the county caucus and what candidate they will vote for. Then at the county caucus, the delegates that were selected at the precinct get together to see what candidates which candidate has the most delegates, and then those delegates cast a vote is taken to see who will go on to the state caucus. At the state level the process is similar to the county, but it has all the county selected delegates together deciding on who will go to the national convention. At the national convention, all the delegates from every state meet to cast their votes to find determine who the presidential and vice-presidential nominees and vice-president will be for the Republican or Democratic Party. At the great gathering of delegates, the candidate who has obtained 1,191 delegates gets the nomination for the Republican Party. The Democratic nominee and the Democratic Party needs 2,025 delegates to win. This year, however, will be a history making event. The Democratic convention may make history because there is no candidate standing out from the rest. Why is this it important that the convention still occur if we usually know who the nominee will be before the convention takes place? Well the primaries mean nothing, for they do not actually pick the nominee because of the middle man, the delegate. All the primaries do is say who the delegates must vote for in the state they represent. That is why the convention takes place. So the majority of states delegates will finally say determine the nominee who for each party that will run for president in November, 2008.
