These are the best (worst) tweets for American democracy from the Iowa caucuses so far.

Sometimes you take the Iowa caucuses for granted, and you forget that the way we pick presidents is weird and complicated and not really constructed to reflect the will of the people. And then, finally, after months of campaigning, Iowa actually votes, and you see the process up close, and it’s impossible to ignore how screwed up it is. Especially now that Twitter has enabled live micro-reporting from the scene.

At the second to last primary debate, Donald Trump said a “smell of death” lingered over Manhattan after 9/11, but “we rebuilt downtown Manhattan, and everybody in the world watched and everybody in the world loved New York and loved New Yorkers.” It seems someone took that “we” literally!

CNN showed an unexpected method for collecting ballots:

The pro-Iowa argument is that Iowans take the process of picking the president very seriously, that the caucus system of having supporters give speeches and try to win over other voters is a way to create a better marketplace of political ideas. And yet:

Local color was certainly not limited to the GOP side:

But don’t be too worried that the leader of the free world is being picked by maniacs. They do deeply love America, even when printed on a 50-50 cotton-poly blend likely made in China: