It always impacts working folks, parents, and they elderly. Turnout is small compared to the voting population.

supporters of a candidate to dominate the caucus vote. That's what happened in my precinct in 2008 and 2016. High turnout of supporters of a particular candidate skewed the results strongly.

But tradition

before the next presidential election year.

I'm glad MN switched to a primary

and they have changed over the years. In the last couple of elections you could just show up and vote first, without sticking around for all the party business. This did encourage more people to vote but still had the effect of attracting only the most enthusiastic voters. And that process became a PITA, too. One of the more recent caucuses for my precinct combined all of the meetings for several precincts in a single school building, with the result that there was no place to park for blocks around, and people had to wait in a blocks-long line just to get into the building to vote. It's still cold in Minnesota in March.

Part of the whole process used to involve proposing resolutions to take to the district and state conventions. Some of these resolutions were extreme or stupid and wasted a lot of time with discussions that sometimes got a bit heated. I recall one caucus many years ago that ended up in a shouting match with a bunch of angry nuns over abortion. It is also true that the results of the candidate allocation were not representative of the voters as a whole. In one election the majority of my precinct's votes went to Kucinich, but only because - as happens so often - the more extreme candidates and positions were represented by the most ardent and implacable fanboys, who would plan in advance to show up and take over.

I'm glad we switched to a primary process. I'm not too happy about having to declare a party preference, since Minnesota does not require voters to register with a party and there are legitimate concerns about privacy, but I understand that this was to prevent people from switching parties only for the primary in order to cast a vote for the candidate they want their actual preferred party to run against. The state GOP refused to put any candidate but Trump on their ballot, and the state Supreme Court upheld that decision, mainly because of the timing and a disinclination to interfere with a party's management of its elections. http://www.startribune.com/justices-reject-challenge-to-minnesota-gop-s-trump-only-primary-ballot/566856442/

Horrible. Also, they didn't provide ballots for voting at all. We ended up making our own from folded quarters of paper. People wrote the name of the candidate they supported on them, folded them and put them in a paper bag for counting. Very unprofessional.

Since there were two precincts in the same crowded room, The two conveners handled the common business together, and then we divided things up, but it was chaos. I finally managed to quiet the room down so we could explain the process to everyone, and tried to make it clear which precincts were there and which desk was for each precinct to get the votes in the right bags.

Anyhow, after things quieted down, we had our votes and almost everyone left immediately, even before they were counted. We had the usual team of volunteers doing the counting and verification and reported the votes on the form provided. I have no idea whether people voted in the correct precinct though, but I supposed it didn't matter, since both are really the same neighborhood.

I've dropped out of precinct politics now. I wasn't happy with how the 2016 caucus went at all.

how your post sounds so fimiliar. 2016 Precinct Caucus's here in Las Vegas were,for the most part,captured by two competing Camps. And yes,my Caucus Precient as well as four other Precincts all met at the same Junior High which posed issues with crowding and of course Parking.

Have to say,if it had not been for the two Unions representing the Hospitality Industry,there would not have been as many participants. Again,it would have been 2012 all over were maybe we had like six people from my Precinct show up.

Nevada State Legislature was to have a Primary this year but that did not happen. Back to the old Caucus system. Primaries garner a true value of a Candidate.

Caucuses are easy to game