(Spirit Lake)– The highlight of the Presidential nominating season for Iowa voters is coming up Monday evening, February 3rd, with Democrats and Republicans caucusing statewide.
In Dickinson county, Democratic Party Chairman Bret Copeland says Democrats will be caucusing at two locations beginning at 7:00 pm at each site…
“So if you get there and you’re in line by 7:00 pm you will still be allowed to come in and caucus and we’ll hold all action until that last person is in the door. This year is a little different for us for Dickinson county Democrats. We’re actually having two caucus locations based on the precincts that are divided up between two locations. So the first location is the Dickinson County Expo Center and our other location is in Milford at the Milford Community Building, right next door to the library there. People can find out which location they are caucusing at by going to Iwillvote-dot-com, entering their home address and from there they’ll be told which location they should report to based on their precinct.”
Copeland says there will be a bit of a change to the caucus format Democrats will be using this go-round…
“There’s going to be two alignments. In past years we’ve been able to go back and forth between your chosen candidate a couple of different times, but this year you’re going to be limited to two alignments. Your first preference if your candidate is viable based on the number of people in the room, and meets the viability threshold, you’ll actually be locked to that preference first on your first go round. If your candidate isn’t viable on that first round, you will be able to re-align to a candidate who is viable. So it’s a little different this year, but people are still going to be able to make their voice heard and stand with the candidate that they believe will lead the United States.”
Dickinson county Republicans will caucus at one location, the Wimbledon Room at Arrowwood Resort and Conference Center in Okoboji. Republican party Chairman Dave Rowley says the doors will open at 6:00 pm with the caucus beginning promptly at 7:00 pm…
“Registered Republicans check in, they go to their precinct, and this is what is called a super caucus because we’re all in one location. And at that caucus we do a Presidential straw poll where we’ll be voting for our nominee for President. And then we also have, more importantly, five precincts central committee members are voted in. And central committee members are so very important in each precinct of the 15 precincts that we have in Dickinson. Then the next vote, Steve, is the county convention which comes up March 14th, Republican County Convention, each precinct also sends delegates and alternates to the county convention.”
Rowley says there is one thing in particular you might want to think about doing prior to Monday’s caucus…
“If you registered recently you may need to re-register at the caucus, but just get there early enough so you can register as a Republican prior to the start of the caucus. The doors open at 6:00 pm and if people want they can also check their voter status right now at the Iowa Secretary of State’s website if they just want to make sure everything’s good, but we’ll take good care of all those Republicans coming in and again the doors open at 6:00 and then at 7:00 when we start, we close those doors because we want to make sure we have a big crowd and we attend to business.”
Rowley says Republicans will also be deciding on platform planks as part of their caucus process.
