DES MOINES, Iowa Every four years, reporters converge on Iowa to cover the charming intricacies of the states partisan caucuses, where a relatively small group of dedicated voters gets the first say in the country on who will be either the Republican or Democratic presidential nominee.

But the complexity of the caucuses, which are effectively public, in-person voter surveys run by the two major political parties, have made them the targets of reformers eager to expand voter participation and increase confidence in the system.

Calls to overhaul the caucuses ramped up in the wake of Hillary Clintons razor-thin victory over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016.

In response, the Democratic Party in all but a handful of states has done away with caucuses.

In Iowa, for decades the face of the caucus system, the Democratic Party stuck with the practice, but adopted a series of reforms designed to increase access and the transparency of the results.

Now, Iowa politics watchers worry that those fixes will create still more problems.

They are taking a process that is already complex and confusing, and making it even more complex and confusing, said Dennis Goldford, a politics professor at Drake University in Des Moines, who specializes in the caucuses.

Below is a guide to the Iowa caucuses, the changes and how they could affect who claims victory: