Area Republican caucuses see low voter turnout compared to previous primaries
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
After 12 years of holding a presidential preference election in the primaries, caucuses were held around the state for the Republican presidential primary.
The change has some people wanting to revert back to the old system.
The last time Missouri Republicans held a caucus to assign delegates in a presidential campaign was in 2012. In 2022, after Missouri Republicans voted on a new piece of legislation that made sweeping changes to the state voting laws, which included implementing photo ID and two weeks of no-excuse absentee voting.
Rep. Rudy Veit (R-District 59) began working to switch back to the presidential preference primary as soon as the change was made. He argues the caucus system limits the number of people who are able to participate in the primaries.
“I believe that we want more people involved in our political system every year, that’s what makes it work,” Viet said. “If nobodies involved then a few get the control.”
Last year, he helped introduce HB 347 which would reinstate the presidential preference primary. The bill was replaced with a substitute bill that was co-sponsored by three other representatives, but it was defeated in April.
After participating in the Cole County caucuses this weekend, Veit said he would still like to revert back to the old system, citing limited participation.
“Our policemen couldn’t participate, our military people, our active service people couldn’t participate. Most grandparents couldn’t and again most people that were there weren’t sure when we started how it was even going to happen,” Veit told ABC 17 News.
Missouri has 54 Republican delegates available, 51 of those were awarded at caucuses across the state on Saturday. Of those 51 delegates, 20 were awarded by the 263 people who attended the Boone County caucus.
For comparison, 25,629 people in Boone County cast a ballot in the 2016 Republican primary election, which was the last time Republicans did not have an incumbent running for president. During the 2020 Republican primary, 8,183 Boone County residents cast a ballot for the presidential preference primary.
The Cole County caucus had 240 participants. During the 2020 primary 4,721 Cole County Republicans voted in the presidential preference primary.
Boone County Clerk Brianna Lennon told ABC 17 News last week that there were several reasons for the change, including cost and the date being too close to local elections.
“For a lot of election authorities, county clerks and Boards of Elections in the state, our concern is that the second week of March is very close to the first week of April, when we have our local municipal election which is incredibly important," Lennon told ABC 17 News on Friday. "It has school board candidates and local races on it and it was very difficult to turn around two county-wide elections within a three week period of time."
While the changes may have limited participation, it also switched the bulk cost to put on the primary election from the state to the parties. Lennon said it cost roughly $260,000 to put on the 2020 primary elections.
According to Boone County Central Committee Member and Caucus Chair Tony Lupo, the cost to host the local GOP caucus was $1,500, which includes the facility, security and supplies. He added the Boone County Central Committee is on the hook to cover the cost.
Lennon also says that another reason for the switch is because some people thought the presidential preference system was a “redundant election” since in Missouri, there is currently no rule bounding delegates to their candidates.
“The political parties didn’t have any binding process in place, where if the results of the election said a certain thing it wasn’t necessarily binding on the political parties to honor those election results and so some people thought it was kind of a meaningless election,” Lennon told ABC 17 on Friday.
During the 2020 presidential preference election, now-former President Donald Trump received nearly 96% of the votes cast in the Boone County Republican primary. On Saturday, Trump received the support of 217 of the 263 people (82.5%) in attendance.
In 2016 Trump received 30.9% of the Boone County vote in a tightly contested race that saw Ted Cruz get roughly 44% of the vote (43.87%). Given that Trump dominated the delegates in Missouri, in a race that was decided before noon, the results of the election likely would not have changed if the system had been different.
However, Viet argues that the caucus system can make some voters uncomfortable. He says that everyone in his family votes, but none of them would feel comfortable going to a caucus.
“Your vote isn’t as private as you would like,” Viet said. “It’s not very conducive to being able to sit down and relax and a lot of people just do not want to be in large crowds of this nature with this type of type of political atmosphere going on.”
