Letters to the editor for Sunday, Feb. 10

CAUCUS VS. PRIMARY

Time is too precious

The extraordinary turnout at Tuesday night's caucuses points out the interest Minnesotans have in choosing the candidate for the fall election. I had to search for a place to park, walk some distance to the caucus site, make my way through throngs of people to find the room where my precinct was meeting in order to spend a few minutes voting for my choice for president.

I'm lucky that I was able to take this time. So many others weren't able to take time off work or school or from their other commitments to make it to a caucus during the 1 1/2 hours when their votes could be placed. Wouldn't a primary make more sense? Wouldn't that be much more democratic?

SHARON KINSMITH, New Hope

I propose having one national primary, which could be held in May. That would give every candidate six months to prepare. I went to a caucus when I was a child and it was the most boring thing I ever witnessed. I vowed never to have anything to do with one again.

SEAN M. CONWAY, HINCKLEY, MINN.

I attended a caucus for the first time this Super Tuesday and sat in a hot schoolroom for over an hour in order to not have my voice heard. There was not a single delegate for my candidate.

It is too simple to say that I should have stood up to run as a delegate. I have an infant and a job, and my husband works nights. I would not be able to commit to attend conventions.

I believe that the system as it stands guarantees that certain segments of the population will be excluded. Perhaps this is why we keep on getting the same old same old.

LEILANI EMBREY, BELLE PLAINE

On Tuesday night I attended my first caucus. While there I met my neighbors and discussed important issues. The process might have been inefficient and messy, but I went home feeling more connected to my neighborhood and the political process.

I was surprised by your Wednesday morning editorial that advocated replacing caucuses with primaries. We need community dialogue on the issues the country faces. Replacing caucuses with a primary might create more efficiency in the process, but we'd lose the dirt-under-the-fingernails experience of caucusing. Instead of giving five minutes to the antiseptic experience of the voting booth, I prefer giving my whole night to the meaningful discussions that take place at a caucus.

MICHAEL WEINBECK, MINNEAPOLIS

Caucuses are party-building tools that reward die-hard activists but depress voter turnout and disenfranchise many. Primaries elevate turnout but do not improve party strength or foster grass-roots activism.

If Minnesota's political parties want to balance democratic participation with party-building, they should adopt a hybrid system. From 7 a.m. until 8 p.m., voters could participate in a primary, casting ballots for national, state, and local candidates. At 8 p.m., the voting could close and the caucus could begin, with debate on party platform resolutions, election of precinct chairs, and other important organizational business.

BRIAN KLAAS, NORTHFIELD, MINN.

READING ACHIEVEMENT

Teach children well

As a retired teacher who has worked in both Reading First and No Child Left Behind (NCLB), I am in complete agreement with Garrison Keillor ("And the righteous, it turns out, shall muck up the earth," Feb. 3). I hope many Democrats find it in their hearts to follow his lead.

KAREN PREW, CHASKA

Garrison Keillor raises a point I've been waiting to see articulated for a long time: Political progressives or liberals can, and should, embrace effective educational practices and policies (like NCLB) that promote the widescale use of these practices.

As one of the "poobah Ph.D.s of education" Keillor so rightly chastens, I believe we shouldn't do this only because of our faith in "scientific truth," but also because it advances a social justice purpose that brought many of us educational researchers to this applied science in the first place.

With those principles in mind, it seems impossible to accept the abysmal record of educating kids who are poor, or from ethnic or linguistic minority groups, or are disabled. Rather, we should be working to promote the use of effective educational practices, and supporting policies that speed their application..

SCOTT MCConnell, St Paul; professor, University of Minnesota

In the '70s we needed a certified Communist hunter like Richard Nixon to open up China. Today, America needed a true-believing liberal like Garrison Keillor to tell the truth about the public schools.

Now that someone on the left has admitted that the wholly owned subsidiary of the teachers union called your public school is failing in its core mission, maybe this paper could find the courage to demand an explanation. (Please practice saying "Oh BS" for when the union trots out its standard defense "not enough funds.")

TERRY LARKIN, MINNETONKA

COGNITIVE DISSONANCE

Crime in the city

On Feb. 2 we learned that Minneapolis police don't have enough to do ("Minneapolis homicide-free in '08 -- so far"); on Feb. 3 Nick Coleman tells us that there aren't enough police to investigate the near-fatal beating of Robert Anderson. Mayor Rybak? Chief Dolan?

MATT FOSS, MINNEAPOLIS