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A first-time campaign manager calls a friend on Saturday morning. The candidate announced two weeks ago. The kickoff fundraiser is Thursday. Volunteers are on the list. The friend asks the question that wakes the campaign manager up: where are you getting the voter file? There is a long silence. The campaign manager has not thought about the voter file. The campaign manager has been thinking about...

On the night of the primary, in a precinct in a Detroit suburb, a man stays up until 1:42 am refreshing the county clerk's website. There are forty-eight ballots cast in his precinct's delegate race. He has fifty-one votes. He won by three. He goes to the state convention. The candidate who lost goes home. Precinct delegate elections are the smallest elections in American politics that anybody pay...