First, a disclaimer.  I support Hillary Clinton for president.  Now, onto the issue at hand.

I believe that the caucus system is, at root, unfair and problematic.  Before addressing the particular impact of the workplace caucus rule, it's necessary to lay out some general problems with caucuses.

General Problems with Caucuses

1. Caucuses do not allow everybody to vote,  Many people are excluded due to workplace duties, childcare duties, being out of town, religious reasons, etc.

2. Caucuses tend to violate the one person one vote principal.  Due to allocation of delegates, some people's votes end up counting more than others.

3. Caucuses do not allow secret voting.  They thus can create situation in which people feel intimidated against voting for who they really want.

4. Caucuses tend to be more dominated by activists than primaries.  Therefore, they can lead to selection of candidates who are not very electable in general elections.

5. The rules of caucuses are often so opaque and complex that they can make the whole electoral seem rigged.

What then is Nevada's worksite caucus rule, and how does it potentially affect these 5 points?

Nevada's Worksite Caucus Rule

The details of the plan are out in the 65-page document explaining the Nevada caucus rules. Basically, the rules establish special at-large precincts at any worksite that has 4,000 or more shift workers.  There are nine of these worksites, all major hotels on the Las Vegas Strip.  Workers at those sites, or at any other worksite within 2.5 miles of each site, will be able to vote if they show an employee idea and sign a declaration indicating that work obligations kept them from attending their home precinct caucus.

The complicated part comes in assigning delegates.  In Nevada, the number of delegates per residential precinct is based on how many registered Democrats there are in the county and precinct.  At the at-large precincts, an entirely different formula will be used, based on how many people show up at the caucus.

How these differential rules will effect the selection of delegates is hard to predict, since it depends in large part on how many people turn up to vote at the special precincts.  However, under a worst case scenario (or best case scenario, depending on how you look at it), a vote at the at-large precinct could carry 10 times as much weight as a vote at a neighboring precinct.  For example, if there are 400 registered Democrats at a local Las Vegas precinct, and all 400 of them show up to caucus, they would receive 8 delegates (one per 50 voters).  However, if 400 people show up at an at-large precinct, they will receive 80 delegate, a tenfold difference.

The Basis of the Lawsuit

The lawsuit was launched by the Nevada State Education Association (NSEA), an affiliate of the National Educational Association (NEA).  Neigher the NSEA nor the NEA have endorsed for president (the other teacher's union, the AFT, has endorsed Clinton).  Some leaders of the NSEA are personally supportive of Clinton, and at least one person involved in the suit is personally supportive of Edwards.

The 13-page lawsuit is available online.  It asserts violation of equal protection, based on the disproportionality mentioned above.  It also claims that the rules violate several aspects of the state constitution, including those that govern when precincts can be formed and what laws regulate their formation.

I have no idea if the lawsuit has much legal basis.  On the one hand, I understand that political parties have a lot of leeway to organize their candidate selection process however they wish.  On the other hand, to a layman, some of the points in the lawsuit seem valid once reading it.

Do the At-Large Caucuses Address the 5 Problems with Caucuses?

What then is the overall effect of the at-large workplace caucus system in relationship to the five problems with caucuses addressed above?  I would argue that the at-large workplace caucuses partly address the first problem while exacerbating the remaining four.

As to the first problem, the at-large precincts do make caucusing more accessible to people who work in the Vegas strip.  However, they do nt make caucusing more accessible to people who work elsewhere, people who have to take care of their children, people who have disabilities, people who are traveling out of state, or people who can't vote on a Saturday due to religious reasons.

As to the second problem, the at-large precincts can exacerbate the violations of one-person one-vote, as seen in the issue of disproportionality discussed above.

They can also exacerbate the potential of intimidation.  If your fellow workers, union members, shop steward, and maybe union boss are all standing in the same room with you as you caucus, the pressure to follow their lead could be enormous.

They also lead to even greater influence among activists, in this case labor activists.  In general, I favor stronger labor participation in our system.  However, I think that should occur in a primary system, where labor is forced to exercise its muscle among the general electorate.  If labor is viewed as selecting candidates through disproportionate influence over a caucus system, with separate rules for people at  its own worksites, that does not look favorable to the Democratic party.

Finally, with differential systems for assigning delegates at residential and workplace caucuses, the entire system becomes even more opaque and complex, rather than a clear, simple one person one vote system.

Conclusion

There is a big advantage to the workplace caucus system--it extends the right to caucus to a considerable number of workers who would not be able to caucus.  However, it extends that right unevenly and fails to address the needs of many others who cannot caucus.  It also creates a very complex, opaque system which potentially can lead to wildly disproportionate differences in how different people's votes are counted, and leave many people in a situation of intimidation as to how they might vote.

Having said all this, I won't take a particular stand as to whether the workplace caucus rule is a good one or not.  In my opinion, the entire caucus system stinks, and the only solution is to get rid of caucuses and replace them with secret-ballot primaries.