At a set time, Democrats will indicate which candidate they support and the precinct caucus chair will announce which candidates have the most support and which candidates do not have enough support to meet the “viability” threshold.
Caucus systems are not set up to be a one person one vote system. Rather, they are designed to allocate delegates to only those candidates with a threshold of support that is based on the number of people participating in a caucus. Meeting the minimum level of support is called “viability” and whether or not a candidate has enough support determines whether they meet the “threshold” to continue. Caucus participants who support a candidate who is not viable and has not met the threshold of support to continue, realign themselves with their second choice candidate. If a caucus participant does not have a second choice candidate, then he or she simply continues in the process in an uncommitted group.
Based on the size of the presidential preference groups in support of one candidate or another, the delegates to the county convention are apportioned. For example: if the precinct sends 10 delegates to the county convention, those 10 delegates are allocated based on the percentage of people in a preference group. So if candidate A gets 60 percent and candidate B gets 40 percent, then candidate A would get six delegates and candidate B would get four delegates in that precinct.
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