Caucus Chaos

I know that it was a couple weeks ago now, but I am finally getting around to blogging about my Democratic caucus day experience. It was interesting and while I had a few bumps as the leader of my precinct, it sounds like I had smooth sailing compared to many folks around the city.

I convinced Joe to be my volunteer because I didn't know if I would be able to count on recruiting anyone on-site. We showed up at the junior high at about 10AM and were told to pick a room. There were several precincts using the school so we made some signs with our precinct number and hung them around the school, but a lot of people who come in didn't know if they were in the right place. Luckily we had a map and they could look to see if their neighborhood fell in the precinct boundaries. Unfortunately, if they weren't in my area I couldn't help them find their room because there wasn't a min directory saying where each precinct would be located. They had to just wander around trying different rooms.

Sign in was a busy process and Joe ended up helping all the people who were pre-registered while I took all the new registrations. You could register as a Dem on the day of the caucus even if you were previously a Republican or independent, and originally I only had 7 voter registration forms in my packet. We went to the post office and grabbed more, which was a good thing because we ended up signing up about 25 new people.

One guy was a volunteer from the Hillary campaign and he brought in another volunteer from a different precinct and asked me to help him. Turns out the precinct chair didn't show up. They didn't have any of their supplies, no forms, nothing. I don't know what they expected me to do. I couldn't leave my precinct, we couldn't combine, and I didn't have any of their info, so I all I could do was give him the Dem's emergency hotline and wish him luck. I did give him some of my voter reg. forms, but it was a small consolation because it wouldn't do them any good for today. In the end I don't know what became of them, but I hope they got some help.

At 11:30 I called the meeting to order and the first item of business was to elect the "permanent chair." I was technically the "temporary chair" and so I nominated myself and explained that I had been trained by the NV Dems to run the caucus so I got a unanimous approval. They told us that we would be easily elected, but I was worried that I would have a contender when one old guy came in early on and made a point of telling me that he had been a precinct captain for several years in the past. Um, good for you?

It was kinda weird because we were in a classroom so all the people sat at the student desks and I was standing at the front of the room like the teacher. We ended up staring at each other and sitting quietly for about 15 minutes because the rules stated you could not do any official counting until noon. It was awkward, but what could I do? I did take some questions and a few people wanted to know when we would be going into the gym. They thought that we would be combining with other precincts at some point. I had to explain that no, we were our own group, totally autonomous from the others and we would be caucusing among ourselves and then electing 4 delegates on our own. It just goes to show how little everyone knew about the caucus process.

Finally noon rolled around and we were able to get things underway. First we had to count up all the people present. I went around and counted but the promptly forgot the final total as soon as I was done. Obviously I would need to start again, but there was one bossy girl who was watching me like a hawk making sure I was doing everything right. How she would know is beyond me, but anyway. So I recounted and marked the number, 49, on the worksheet.

Everyone had already grouped up according to their candidate preference, resulting in a big group for Hillary, a big group for Obama, and 3 people for Edwards. We calculated the viability number, which is the minimum number of supporters a candidate would need in our group to qualify for 1 delegate. The viability was 8. Obviously the Edwards people didn't have enough so I told them they could realign if the wanted to. Two of them got pissed and said they were leaving. They didn't want to do it anymore. Well that threw everything off. To be honest, I wasn't sure what I had to do, but they had taken their ballots with them, so decided to redo the count, which would now be 47 and the subtraction of two people didn't affect anything else. The one remaining Edwards guy decided to go over to the Hillary side and he was cool with the process.

So next we had to count up the supporters in each camp and figure out how many delegates they would get. We only had 4 to award in our precinct. There were 28 for Clinton and 19 for Obama, but based on the math and the rounding, both groups were awarded 2 delegates. Next he groups had to choose 2 people each to become the delegates and go to the county convention which would be held on Feb 23. One lady asked me to do it for the Hillary group (I caucused for her), but I said no, I wasn't interested. In truth, Hillary was my half-hearted second choice and I wasn't really committed enough to pursue any further support. Once Joe Biden dropped out I wasn't even sure if I was going to caucus, but the Dems said I was the only person in my precinct willing to do it so I went through with it.

I think technically everyone was free to go, but I asked them to stay while we reported the results. All 4 delegates came up to the front to fill out the necessary paperwork, sign off on our official documents and then we called into the reporting system. One guy had a phone with a good speakerphone so we could all listen. It was a series of prompts and typing in our official numbers and then we were done.

I nearly forgot to collect our paper ballots, but I got them all. Several people came up to thank me and said I did a good job. I know there were a few bumps and I think I forgot to do some parts, but it went well.

In the aftermath of caucus day any concerns I had a bout my performance were ameliorated when I heard what a debacle the process had been in other places.

There were reports of people (both Hillary and Obama supporters) intimidating an harassing the other side. Some precincts had facilities that were way too small for the turn out, and then there was that abandoned precinct and who knows what happened to them. Aside from the snafus there are several reports of people just being savages with no manners at all. Across the city people who we caucusing on school grounds refused to quit smoking even when asked by the principal to stop. Several schools had no food/drink policies and people ignored them. One school's library was vandalized by people who spilled coffee on books, stuck campaign stickers on tables and left trash everywhere. What is wrong with people?

It was a good experience and it sounds like I did everything OK, but I hope they switch to primaries next time.