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I "think" I understand that delegate allocation (for the Iowa Dem caucus) is not uniform, that is to say that it may take 200 votes in one precinct to obtain 1 delegate, while in another it may require only 70 votes. (these numbers only used as an example. Media has been implying that rural precincts require less actual votes than might be in highly urbanized areas.

If that is the case, how is the math done at Satellite voting locations?

In Port Charlotte Florida, there was a satellite caucus meeting held Monday. In that location the final votes were: Amy 56 , Pete 43, Joe 33 (after final alignment, Sanders, Bloomberg, Warren were eliminated). According to the local newspaper "Based on the final percentages, Klobuchar gets four delegates, Buttigieg gets three and Biden gets two."

Now the problem, it seems to me is that all these folks in Port Charlotte are (more than likely) from many different precincts in Iowa.

In order to properly allocate delegates, their votes, by whatever precinct each person represents, would have to be "sent" to their home precinct for proper delegate allocation.

There were 96 "foreign" satellites (that is, outside of Iowa) some as far as Georgia (the country not the state).

I can't see how this would work, (given the delegate-weighting by precinct), without transmitting "votes" to each person's home precinct.

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Each satellite will have delegates as would an individual precinct, and all the satellites’ delegates will be grouped into the equivalent of one “county” at the next step. people are not voting as part of their back-home-in-Iowa county, but as part of this Iowans-out-of-state County.

This is according to this article in Slate

The same rules that govern the caucus process in Iowa apply to the international locations. Each candidate will need 15 percent of the room in order to be viable (so, with the Tbilisi caucus, any caucusgoer’s preferred candidate would be automatically viable). After two rounds, they will submit their results to the party. The outcome of each out-of-state and international caucus will be grouped with the others, creating a single non-Iowa “county.”

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  • So (presuming that each of the 96 satellites are grouped) as a "single non-Iowa county"... it is inaccurate for a satellite leader to say (as in the case of Port Charlotte site): "Klobuchar gets four delegates, Buttigieg gets three and Biden gets two.", leaving the impression that Amy has 10% of all the possible delegates (41) from ** one single caucus site **. .
    – BobE
    Commented Feb 6, 2020 at 17:37
  • It is appropriate to say "Amy gets 4, Pete gets 3, etc," but it is not talking about the 41 Iowa delegates to the DNC. It is not even talking about delegates to the state convention (aka "State delegate equivalents"). It is talking about delegates to the "county" convention. Amy's 4 do not equal even a small fraction of 1 delegate to the DNC. There are several active questions on the board about this process. Precinct delegates go to the county con. County sends delegates to the state con. State con then picks the 41 committed delegates to the DNC.
    – Damila
    Commented Feb 6, 2020 at 19:46
  • Agreed, however the local news reporter failed to make that distinction, thereby contributing to the confusion,
    – BobE
    Commented Feb 6, 2020 at 23:12

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