Washington, Jan. 19: The process of electing a US President for the next four years formally got under way today in freezing temperatures in Iowa with Democrats gathering in schools, churches, coffee houses, community centres and even in private homes to choose their party’s candidate who will be pitted against George W. Bush in November.

The process, known as the “Iowa caucuses” is an exercise in old-fashioned, grassroots democracy, quite the opposite of the election in Florida, which gave American adult franchise a bad name in the presidential election in 2000.

The four Democratic front-runners and their supporters began their caucus day by mobilising registered party voters to take part in gatherings, usually of 40 to 50 people in 2,144 locations in the relatively small, mainly farming state with a small population of under three million people.

The caucuses — originally derived from a native Indian word for meeting — will gather in the evening. At a briefing for foreign journalists in the run up to today’s event, Susan Ramsey, senior vice-president of an Iowa partnership for economic development, explained what this unique institution in American democracy is like.

“There is a group of about 45-50 people. They are registered voters of my party persuasion and would constitute a variety of men and women, of farmers, of business people, of local shopowners, very, very variety in status in the community. Your common voter who you may not really see involved in the political process whatsoever down to the town mayor.”

“We will sit and talk about those issues that we think are very important, the issues that are near and dear to our hearts, and we will write down some of those issues that we want forwarded on to the next level in the process. And then we will split up into groups about who likes what candidate. And there will be arguments, sometimes, between the people about why one candidate is better than another and why this candidate might (be a) better representative (of) our community’s specific needs because his issue is more important to the community than the other candidate’s issue.”

“And there may be several — three or four different groups. And then we will get back together and try to bring the other group over to our group and everybody will kind of lobby for votes until we have a consensus over which candidate that we want to throw our delegates to. So it is very community-based driven. A lot of people concerned about those issues that are important to their community, a lot of people concerned — obviously, very political but very — on a very personal level and you get neighbour fighting with neighbour sometimes, but in the end everybody shakes hands and decides they have a winner and goes home and starts gearing up for the next part of the process. So that is kind of what one (caucus) would look like.”

Eleventh hour indications from Iowa showed that four candidates — Senators John Kerry and John Edwards, Congressman Dick Gephardt and former Vermont governor Howard Dean — were locked in a tie at the top. The Iowa caucuses will be the first electoral test of Democratic presidential hopefuls. With next week’s party primary in New Hampshire, it will set the tone for the November finals.

According to local analysts, no candidate finishing below third place in Iowa has ever won the presidential nomination of either party. But in 1992, a mere 2.8 per cent of caucus participants in Iowa voted for Bill Clinton, then a rank outsider on the national political scene.