Despite still feeling pretty sickly from my bronchitis, I decided that after almost 24 hours on antibiotics that I wasn't contagious so I went with Chris to our local democratic caucus. Neither of us had caucused before, but were anxious to see what the scoop was. Chris has been pretty firmly Obama since day 1. I've been leaning more toward Clinton, but I wasn't 100% firm.
Actually getting to the caucusing site was a nightmare. Somehow, we ended up with the wrong directions and we went to the wrong caucus site in Kent at an elementary school. We walked in and it was total pandemonium. I don't think that anyone had any idea just how many people were going to turn out. After we checked the map to try and find our precinct, we realized that this wasn't the right place. Luckily, Chris pulled up the address of the correct caucus site and we hauled ass to try and make the 1:30 deadline.
Our correct caucus site was at a union hall, and we got there just as the main group was getting ready to split up into precincts. so we found the room that held our precinct and filed in with a few other neighbors. We signed in and wrote down who we were voting for on a registration sheet. Up until the time I wrote "Obama" I was still unsure. After everyone registered, they divided up the delegates based upon the vote split. Our precinct was pretty apathetic and a couple of people said they wanted to be delegates and no one seemed to have any problems with that. I think we all just wanted to leave and get on with our day.
The interesting part is that after you split into your candidate group, you basically send emissaries to the other groups to convince them to vote for your candidate. After a set amount of time, the numbers are calculated again. In the end, our precinct had 5 delegates and they went 3 to Obama, 1 to Clinton, and 1 undecided.
The whole process seems extremely antiquated and it's really easy to see how fraud and miscounts can happen at election time. I've heard that the turnout was expected to be about 200,000 which is about 100,000 more than 2004. Like I said earlier, it was total pandemonium and confusion, but I'm glad we took part in the process.
Makes me wish we could just vote democrat in the primary from the comfort of my living room.
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The caucus process was a mess and felt so antiquated. I could see a system like this working a looong time ago, but nowadays it just feels like buying a used car. I didn't appreciate it.
The one nice thing was seeing how others were voting and hearing their thoughts. Unfortunately that came from listening to another group as nobody in ours really spoke up.
Oh well. GObama!
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