BOISE, Idaho (AP) — Idaho Democrats will hold a statewide caucus on Thursday to select their candidate for the White House, giving the president Joe Biden more delegates after he already won his party’s nomination for 2024.
Caucus participants will also elect pledged delegates to the nominee for the state convention, which will be held on June 22.
The caucus will take place from 5 to 8 p.m. local time — the state is divided between the Pacific and Mountain time zones — and will be structured a little differently than previous Democratic caucuses. Instead of listening to speeches and moving to various parts of the room to demonstrate their support for a candidate, voters will receive ballots to fill in their choices.
Only registered Democrats and unaffiliated voters can participate in the Democratic Caucus. Unaffiliated voters must first sign a pledge stating that they participate as Democrats and have not participated in any other presidential nomination contests this year. Voters aged 17 can participate in party conventions, as long as they turn 18 before the November 5 general elections.
This is different from the Idaho Republican convention held earlier this year: The Republican convention allowed only registered Republicans to vote, and they had to be at least 18 years old at the time of the convention. Former President Donald Trump won all 32 of Idaho’s Republican delegates at the March 2 event.
No matter what happens to the Democratic presidential caucus, the winner will face a steep hill to climb heading into the general election. The Republican presidential candidate has won deep-red Idaho in every election since 1968.
Democrats in Idaho have used caucuses for years, but switched the presidential contest to a primary in 2020. Biden won with about 49% of the vote, compared with about 42% that went to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
However, both the Republican and Democratic parties had to come together this year after state lawmakers inadvertently canceled the state’s primaries during the 2023 legislative session. The mistake happened when lawmakers were trying to change the date of the state’s primary from March to May – but the new date was not included in the project.
Next year, close presidential contests in Idaho could become a thing of the past. An electoral initiative that would open the state primaries and moving the state to a ranked-choice voting system is expected to be on the general election ballot this fall.
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Follow AP’s coverage of the 2024 elections at https://apnews.com/hub/election-2024.
