Originally published February 9, 2008 on my LiveJournal. Man, remember LiveJournal??

So the primaries. Yeah, they're pretty screwy. I've spent probably more time than is healthy following them religiously over the past several months, so here I present you with a one-stop guide to what the fuck is going on. Enjoy!

[Disclaimer: I'm only dealing with the Democratic primaries here, because I don't know as much about the Republican ones. I think they're winner-take-all or something... and McCain is winning right now. And that's about it. So yes, donkey power.]

Once upon a time, about every four years or so, several members from the Democratic party decide that they want to be the next president. "Hell," they say to themselves, "whoever that last bozo was has really screwed things up. I'm clearly the best person to make it all better!" And then everybody looks at them strangely, because they clearly have taken crazy pills to want to take on this sort of responsibility. But what the hell, it's worth a shot, right?

So around January or February, candidates make their wishes known. Sometimes in the bitter cold on the steps of the building Lincoln once worked (Obama). Sometimes they do it on The Daily Show (Bill Richardson). Sometimes in a YouTube video filmed in their living room (no, really-- that's how Hillary Clinton announced).

And then the campaigning starts. And everyone in the country groans, because it's still, what, a year until the earliest primaries and almost two years before the actual election. And the 24-hour news networks begin the long, hard task of speaking of very little else. We're off, people! The race has begun!

A year later, Iowa rolls around. As the Rolling Stone says, "Iowa is not like other states. There's fuck-all to do here, and unless you just love dirt or barnyard sex, you could easily die of boredom — except in an election year, when suddenly you become the center of the universe."

Iowa is the first stop in a seriously long presidential primary season. Political journalists literally have NOTHING to do but hang out in Iowa. Seriously. Dodd actually moved to Iowa, as in lived in a house he rented. Candidates eat a lot of steak. They eat a lot of chili dogs. They talk a lot about farm subsidies, and they shake a lot of hands. And then, one snowy evening (because they're all snowy by that point) in early January, people go and caucus for a candidate.

"Wait," you might be saying. "I thought this was all about voting." Well, caucusing is kind of like voting, except it involves a lot of standing around. So everyone in Iowa goes to their caucus location in a church or school, because this is not Las Vegas (we'll get to that in a bit). Everyone stands around while election officials count how many people are in the room. And then everyone divides up into groups.

Remember when you were in elementary school and the teacher had you divide up by height or hair color or something? It's kind of like that. Except you divide up by presidential candidate. You like Obama? Go over to the Obama corner. You like Hillary? Go over to the Hillary corner. You like Kucinich? Too bad.

This is because the caucuses have this weird rule that if one candidate gets too few people to stand in their corner after the first count, those people have to choose another candidate. So the people whose candidates don't have enough support have to redistribute and get counted again. Basically it's so they weed out any of the candidates who don't stand a chance. But the thing about candidates who don't stand a chance is... they don't stand a chance. "So," you might be asking, "WTF, Iowa?"

What can I say? Iowa's weird.

Then, five days later (this year anyway), New Hampshire holds its primary. And it's a normal primary in every respect, except that New Hampshire is not a normal state. Basically, take that Rolling Stone quote about Iowa, and replace "dirt" with "ice" and "barnyard" with "Libertarian," you've got a pretty good idea about what's going on.

So there's all this build-up and build-up and build-up and then... Iowa and New Hampshire are done. "Why are they so important in the first place?" you might be asking. "They represent, like two percent of all the votes cast in the primaries. "

They are important for basically one reason, and you're going to look at me funny when I say this, but it's totally true. They're important because everyone says they're important.

The candidates spend a heck of a lot of time in those two states. The news media covers them a lot. Campaigns become very invested in them, and people develop personal relationships with the candidates. If you are willing to be a little flexible, any resident of those states can see any political candidate speak in person. And, because of all this, they are supposedly better informed and more ready to make their decisions.

"BWAH??" you might be saying, "where does that make sense?" And Florida and Michigan said basically the same thing this year. They wanted a little piece of the hot candidate visiting action. They wanted some coverage, too, dammit! So they tried to move their primaries up to be either before Iowa and New Hampshire, or right in the same window of time.

But the Democratic and Republican parties didn't like that. "Look," they said to Florida and Michigan, "you can't have your cake and eat it too. You get plenty of attention in the general election. Besides we have it set up this way for a reason, no matter how crazy or random the reason may be."

But Florida and Michigan didn't really like that, so they kept inching their primaries up and up. And finally the DNC took their delegates away. The RNC cut their delegates in half. And the Democratic candidates signed an agreement not to campaign there. In Michigan, almost all of the candidates withdrew from the ballot. Everyone, that is, except for Dodd (he thought he'd do well there), Clinton (far be it from her to deny the voters of Michigan a choice, even if she signed a pledge saying she would deny them the choice), and Kucinich (he lost the paperwork). (You might be tempted to think I'm making this stuff up. But I'm totally not.)

So that's why Michigan and Florida had "primaries," but really nobody bothered to show up.

So then we move on to Nevada and South Carolina, because the DNC decided to try and make the contest a little more diverse this year, both racially and geographically. Iowa is about 91% white and New Hampshire is almost 98% white. In contrast, Nevada is about 84% white and South Carolina is only about 60% white.

Nevada is another caucus place, but Nevada is also crazy, so you can caucus in casinos there. At least you can on the strip. Which leads to newscasters saying things like "Caesar's Palace goes for Obama, while the Wynn casino went for Clinton. Sort of. It's complicated in Vegas."

Why was Nevada so complicated? Well, somebody who was actually there can tell you better than I can. I'll just say that part of the confusion was due to delegates. But we'll get to those in a second.

So South Carolina votes, and Obama wins in a landslide, and we're all really happy. But guess what's next!

You guessed it! It's time for SUPER TUESDAY!

Normally, by this point in the race, you would have a clear front-runner. Somebody would have broken away from the crowd, and Super Tuesday would just be the clincher. But in this case, we entered Super Tuesday with two clear front runners. But this was it! Somebody would come out of this on top!

...Or not.

After 24 different states voted, Clinton came out on top with the popular vote, getting a few thousand more votes. But Obama won more states and, by most accounts, more delegates. Whaaa?

So here's the deal with delegates. What I think happened was that after the days of the smoke-filled rooms, the party got together and decided they needed to redesign their method of choosing a candidate. So they found the person who came up with the electoral college (let's call him Bob) and brought him to headquarters. Then they gave him as much tequila as he could drink. And then told him to engineer an even better system for electing people.

Like the electoral college system, each state is allocated a certain number of delegates, roughly based on the number of Democrats in any given states. And instead of being a winner-take-all sort of a deal, they get divided up proportionally. Which is why, for example, Obama won 13 delegates in Nevada to Clinton's 12, even though Clinton won the popular vote by quite a bit.

So it's complicated and, to make everything worse, every single count you find is different! Politico.com says Clinton has 1,000 to Obama's 902. The NYTimes says that Clinton has 912 and Obama has 741. NBC says that Obama has 861 and Clinton has 855.

"So what is it?" you may be saying. "You told me you had answers!"

Well, the best response I have is that everyone is counting things differently. Caucus results aren't finalized until there are several more conventions within the state (remember how Iowa is weird?). So some news folks are counting those results, while other people are preferring to wait until the results are finalized. And then, there's the thing with the Super Delegates.

Wow, Super Delegates sound exciting, right? Well, unfortunately they don't have super powers (except maybe Al Gore). Basically when that drunken innovator of complicated election cycles was coming up with the delegate thingy, he thought to himself, "Do you know what? I really liked those smoke-filled rooms. Let's make it more like that."

So there are 796 party insiders, everyone from Pelosi to Durbin to Dean to Bill Clinton who are Super Delegates. These people are not pledged to anything and can vote any which way they want. Normally they just go with the prevailing desires of the voting populace. But now, this time they may actually end up making a huge difference.

And so, some counts are already using those votes in their delegate counts (who is Bill Clinton going for? I want you to think real hard).

"But Lexie," you're probably saying, "I thought you would tell us what's really going on!"

Here's the deal. I don't know. You don't know. The New York Times doesn't know, Howard Dean doesn't know, and Obama and Clinton certainly don't know. Nobody knows what's going to happen, and nobody will know for quite some time. We might not have a real presidential contender until after the convention. How exciting would that be?

The only thing I know for certain is that every vote counts. Okay, so if you're Jimmy Carter, it counts a tiny bit more. But still. It counts, people.

Today Maine, Nebraska, and Washington all vote or caucus, but we probably won't have a clear answer even then. Even so, good luck!

In the end, the entire primary system is basically a clusterfuck atop the leaning tower of Pisa. I've done my best to describe it, but really, nothing can. It's just kind of Byzantine, awkward and messy.