Did you know that the US State Department runs a U.S. Elections page?
Overheard in "How Raucus Is the Caucus?"
Washington -- When British writer Lewis Carroll wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in 1885, he satirized a homegrown American political process in “The Caucus-Race.” Organized by the Dodo, it had no logical rules. At a signal, a motley group of animals ran in different directions. When the Dodo declared the race finished, contestants asked “But who has won?” After long thought, the Dodo answered, “Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.”
To an outsider, the caucus may seem as nonsensical as Carroll’s Caucus-Race: “the best way to explain it is to do it,” the Dodo tells Alice. In fact, caucuses are all about doing: giving up personal time, talking, deciding and realigning loyalties when a favored candidate fails to win enough support to be “viable.”
Essentially a neighborhood meeting, the name “caucus” derives from an American Indian word for a conference of tribal leaders.
