So Super Tuesday has been and gone

and I am still puzzled by how the system works, particularly in regard to caucuses. Looking at the results of the democratic party, it is notable that Obama won the majority of the caucuses (8-1).

As far as I can gather, caucuses are an open vote, where everyone knows who you are supporting and you huddle in a group declaring your allegiance to either Clinton or Obama. Now if I was going to a meeting like that, I might be feeling, I like Clinton's views slightly better but the man of the day apparently is Obama, everyone is going to be voting for Obama so I had better do the same or my neighbour might not speak to me again for the next 4 yrs. Am I wrong?

Apparently this is the way (according to my DH) the British unions use to vote until Maggie Thatcher (who would of thunk it) legislated that each union worker should have a single and private vote. It appears to have worked as there definitely a lot less strikes than before her time.

So would the votes have been different if everyone had voted in private?

Apart from the caucuses, there are many, many things I find weird about government over here and I find more puzzling the longer I am here. For a start there is no national standard on voting. Apparently, Georgia was instituting Photo IDs to vote in the Primary there yesterday and there was talk of poor people being disenfranchised because of it, despite the fact the Photo ID are apparently free. Now I suspect a part of this is to do with illegal immigration but that is not the publicly stated fact. In some states if you are a registered independent you can vote in either primary/caucus (obviously not both, although who checks that?) In some states you aren't just voting on a candidate but new state laws as well (the number of laws is ridiculous, they will be banning you from picking your nose before long:))

The other annoying thing is the TV coverage. They were predicting wins based on 1% of the counted vote and announcing it as if true, whilst polls in other parts of the country were still open. This happens in the general election, often even before the west coast has finished voting, they have declared who the winner is. Wouldn't that influence your vote, especially if you were swaying from one choice to the other, because as there isn't that much difference in their viewpoints anyway.

Oh, I could go on and on, but basically I can't see how this method of voting is most democratic system in the world, maybe in 1787, when there were long distances between communities and no immediate media hype but surely not into today's society.

I know someone is going to mention the UK system and yeah it has its faults but it is trying to reform - House of Lords into an wholly elected chamber for example but as far as I can see the Senate is all that but in name anyway ( a lot are there simply because Daddy was there).