Moodle

Wow - I had no idea what I was getting into! First of all, the location our ward had selected was way too small. In fact, I suspect that if the fire marshal had been there we would have been kicked out. LOL But, we squeezed into our schools tiny gym/lunchroom combo, trying to make the best of it. Total number of people at the Democratic Caucus in our ward - 293. Our school has less pupils than that!

So, here’s how it goes. Caucus opens the doors at 6:00. The rules are supposed to be read somewhere around 6:30, and no one can enter to participate past 7:00pm. If you are in line at that time, you are fine. We got there just before 6, which meant an hour of waiting, but that was ok since we were able to get chairs!

The first thing I noticed as that the Obama campaign was working hard, as you walked in the door they came up and wanted to give you a sticker. If you said you were undecided, they came after you like a hawk! The other candidates also had people passing out information and stickers, but they hung around their respective areas. I wonder how many votes Obama rounded up just for being the first and more aggressive???

There were a bunch of rules read, although our chairperson did skip a few even causing everyone to laugh by saying “etc”. At the time it was funny, but in light of how things went down later maybe she should have read everything.

After the rules were read, we each headed to an area in the gym marked for our candidate. Then we had a head count, the rule being that a candidate had to have the 15% of the vote to stay viable (which meant 44 people at our location). First run, Obama obviously had the biggest group. Edwards the second largest. Hillary third, but she only had 35 people, making her not viable. I was very surprised by that! The other candidates had less than 10 people each, and also were not viable. So, we were told that everyone had 1/2 hour to try to convince the non-viable groups to join Obama or Edwards. People went to work, some very aggressively. Still, Clintons group held strong, not wanting to give up. This is the part that confused me, as I thought they had to move or they were not counted as voters. I’m still not clear on that because of the mess I’m about to tell you about.

So, everyone counts again, and no one really moved groups at all, thinking that they had a second chance to try to make their group viable. Hillary’s group still comes in under, working hard (one guy even offered money - I think it was a joke) and they only got 43 people to their group. One short of 44, but no matter what, they couldn’t sway anyone.

Here’s where it gets really messy. At this point the caucus chairperson tells everyone to either join Obama or Edwards, or to leave and they wouldn’t count in the vote. About 5 Clinton people left, the rest of the group disbanded and headed to either Obama or Edwards. At this point, people start arguing with the chairperson, saying something about there is a rule that you can only move once. Another person was saying that Hillary should have gotten a delegate because you only needed 35 people for one, and they had 35. Then someone else argued that made no sense. And so on. We were all told to stay put while they tried to sort it out, even calling the Democratic Parties Headquarters. We waited and waited, and honestly I have no idea what happened, but they eventually said Clintons people wouldn’t have gotten a delegate and we were done. We were told to stick around and nominate delegates for our group, but my friends and I peeled out. By then, I was so confused and tired I didn’t want anything more to do with it.

So - it was quite the experience! I will do it again, but hopefully next time our chairperson will be more experienced and know what they are doing.

Other interesting things… There were a lot of men for Hillary, I was surprised! This included our school principal. Obama had *tons* of younger people. Many in our group couldn’t understand how they were old enough to vote. LOL He seems to have appeal to the new voters, at least in our area. Also, he had some of the pushiest and loudest voters. Edwards - well, his group was pretty mixed. A lot of seniors, but also a lot of women and a fair number of the “younger” generation. I think his was the calmest group, although I could be biased since I was standing in it! LOL

So, that’s it! I’ve survived my first caucus and I think I’ve learned a lot!