caucus!
Like many others in Washington State, I went to my local presinct's Democratic caucus yesterday. The organizers of my meeting place (serving 6 presincts) clearly weren't prepared for how many people showed up.
I only decided to go on Thursday; after not having followed the primaries at all, my whirlwind attempt to catch up and make a decision didn't actually get me anywhere; I signed in as "uncommitted". I had decided I was unwilling to support Edwards. I had heard that he supported the Patriot act but says the administration used it improperly. I feel strongly that its misuse indicates that the underlying legislation is flawed, as it doesn't contain appropriate checks & balances.
We milled around for a while, waiting for everyone to sign in. I wandered around hoping to find others willing to try to talk me into voting for someone in particular. Nearly everyone who had anything visible was a Dean supporter. After talking to a few of their supporters ("hi, I'm currently uncommitted; why do you support Dean?"), I tried without success to find supporters of other candidates.
They did a last call for sign-ins as the woman in charge of our site read the caucus rules, in accordance with the official process. Along the way, she listed the districts, including mine, that did not have a PCO (Precinct Committee Officer).
We were the first precinct to be assigned a meeting room, she sent us there and everyone was hanging out with a "what's next?" look. So I raised my voice a little said something like, "We should get started. Anyone interested in being chair?" About halfway through that last sentence, the inevitable result dawned on me. Everyone looked at me. I became the chair, uncontested.
We spent some time getting organized. No one had grabbed a copy of the rules, so someone went down to get them. He came back with several copies; we waited a bit for him to make another trip to get our initial vote count as well as what that meant in terms of delegates. From our 42 voters present, our five delegates were split two for Kerry, two for Dean, and one for "uncommitted". Edwards (1) and Kucinich (5) didn't get the 7 votes necessary to meet the 15% rule. I asked everyone to shift around in the room to indicate who they supported. It was now 11:00; I recommended that we discuss for "at least 20 minutes", since the time for discussion was supposed to run from 10:30 to at least 11:00. I also reminded people that they could leave, freezing their vote as recorded on the sign-in sheets (possibly amended).
The discussion was interesting. There was one woman who spoke strongly for Kucinich. She didn't impress me much, probably because there was a very articulate Dean supporter able to field basically every question thrown his way. His responses were both internally consistent and consistent with what I had heard from Dean otherwise. Despite their numbers, the Kerry contingent had very little to say, other than ask questions of the outspoken Kucinich and Dean supporters. I ended up siding with Dean, very disappointed in the Kerry supporters' inability to say anything substantive of him. Also, most of the people who left before the discussion got interesting supported Kerry.
Shortly after 11:20, someone pointed out that our 20 minutes was up, so I called for a last opportunity for people to speak, which put us a bit over 11:30. The Edwards and "uncommitted" groups collapsed. The Dean contingent grew some; I joined. I think the Kerry people might have shrunk, but I don't recall for certain. The Kucinich people had picked up 2 people, and had a third on the fence between Kucinich and Dean, which left us scrambling to determine whether her vote would alter the results at all. (Even though the 7 committed Kucinich supporters would be 15%, it might still not be enough to get a whole delegate.) We didn't work that out until nearly noon (yes, 7 gets them a delegate), at which point people were anxious to get going. However, we still had to elect delegates, though that actually happened by consensus. I declined to be a delegate, partly because there's a chance I'll be in Scandinavia at the wrong time to participate, and partly because I felt like I didn't want to play any more of a role than I already was.
Last, we voted on two resolutions promoted by SNOW (I think they were Iraq #1, Patriot act #1). We passed the Patriot Act one immediately but amended the Iraq one because of concerns the group had of the destabilization potential of immediately withdrawing troops.
Then we went through the bookkeeping exercises of handing out delegate certificates and getting info down on paper about the delegates.
I think I made an acceptable chair, but I could have done better. A number of the participants thanked me and said they felt I had done well as chair. However, I think I could have wrapped up debate a bit mroe quickly without losing content by setting a little more structure around it. I also felt disorganized throughout the event. I should have spent a few minutes early on understanding the paper requirements for my role; instead, I was scrambling at the end to decipher this mystery packet I had to deal with.
I also think the party could have done a few things better. They should have spent 3-5 minutes briefing the newly-elected chairs of precincts without PCOs, telling them what's expected of them. They should provide paper for taking minutes. They should provide some way for us to dynamically enter in the changing numbers of how many supporters we have for what candidates so we can get immediate feedback of how many delegates that translates to.
Overall, I was pleased with how things went, even though it seemed crazy & disorganized. I feel like a fair, democratic result came out of our precinct, and I think that the party folks running the show were doing quite well for having at least an order of magnitude more people show up than they're used to.
I only decided to go on Thursday; after not having followed the primaries at all, my whirlwind attempt to catch up and make a decision didn't actually get me anywhere; I signed in as "uncommitted". I had decided I was unwilling to support Edwards. I had heard that he supported the Patriot act but says the administration used it improperly. I feel strongly that its misuse indicates that the underlying legislation is flawed, as it doesn't contain appropriate checks & balances.
We milled around for a while, waiting for everyone to sign in. I wandered around hoping to find others willing to try to talk me into voting for someone in particular. Nearly everyone who had anything visible was a Dean supporter. After talking to a few of their supporters ("hi, I'm currently uncommitted; why do you support Dean?"), I tried without success to find supporters of other candidates.
They did a last call for sign-ins as the woman in charge of our site read the caucus rules, in accordance with the official process. Along the way, she listed the districts, including mine, that did not have a PCO (Precinct Committee Officer).
We were the first precinct to be assigned a meeting room, she sent us there and everyone was hanging out with a "what's next?" look. So I raised my voice a little said something like, "We should get started. Anyone interested in being chair?" About halfway through that last sentence, the inevitable result dawned on me. Everyone looked at me. I became the chair, uncontested.
We spent some time getting organized. No one had grabbed a copy of the rules, so someone went down to get them. He came back with several copies; we waited a bit for him to make another trip to get our initial vote count as well as what that meant in terms of delegates. From our 42 voters present, our five delegates were split two for Kerry, two for Dean, and one for "uncommitted". Edwards (1) and Kucinich (5) didn't get the 7 votes necessary to meet the 15% rule. I asked everyone to shift around in the room to indicate who they supported. It was now 11:00; I recommended that we discuss for "at least 20 minutes", since the time for discussion was supposed to run from 10:30 to at least 11:00. I also reminded people that they could leave, freezing their vote as recorded on the sign-in sheets (possibly amended).
The discussion was interesting. There was one woman who spoke strongly for Kucinich. She didn't impress me much, probably because there was a very articulate Dean supporter able to field basically every question thrown his way. His responses were both internally consistent and consistent with what I had heard from Dean otherwise. Despite their numbers, the Kerry contingent had very little to say, other than ask questions of the outspoken Kucinich and Dean supporters. I ended up siding with Dean, very disappointed in the Kerry supporters' inability to say anything substantive of him. Also, most of the people who left before the discussion got interesting supported Kerry.
Shortly after 11:20, someone pointed out that our 20 minutes was up, so I called for a last opportunity for people to speak, which put us a bit over 11:30. The Edwards and "uncommitted" groups collapsed. The Dean contingent grew some; I joined. I think the Kerry people might have shrunk, but I don't recall for certain. The Kucinich people had picked up 2 people, and had a third on the fence between Kucinich and Dean, which left us scrambling to determine whether her vote would alter the results at all. (Even though the 7 committed Kucinich supporters would be 15%, it might still not be enough to get a whole delegate.) We didn't work that out until nearly noon (yes, 7 gets them a delegate), at which point people were anxious to get going. However, we still had to elect delegates, though that actually happened by consensus. I declined to be a delegate, partly because there's a chance I'll be in Scandinavia at the wrong time to participate, and partly because I felt like I didn't want to play any more of a role than I already was.
Last, we voted on two resolutions promoted by SNOW (I think they were Iraq #1, Patriot act #1). We passed the Patriot Act one immediately but amended the Iraq one because of concerns the group had of the destabilization potential of immediately withdrawing troops.
Then we went through the bookkeeping exercises of handing out delegate certificates and getting info down on paper about the delegates.
I think I made an acceptable chair, but I could have done better. A number of the participants thanked me and said they felt I had done well as chair. However, I think I could have wrapped up debate a bit mroe quickly without losing content by setting a little more structure around it. I also felt disorganized throughout the event. I should have spent a few minutes early on understanding the paper requirements for my role; instead, I was scrambling at the end to decipher this mystery packet I had to deal with.
I also think the party could have done a few things better. They should have spent 3-5 minutes briefing the newly-elected chairs of precincts without PCOs, telling them what's expected of them. They should provide paper for taking minutes. They should provide some way for us to dynamically enter in the changing numbers of how many supporters we have for what candidates so we can get immediate feedback of how many delegates that translates to.
Overall, I was pleased with how things went, even though it seemed crazy & disorganized. I feel like a fair, democratic result came out of our precinct, and I think that the party folks running the show were doing quite well for having at least an order of magnitude more people show up than they're used to.