Centerfield

Caucus-Blogging

We could tell there would be a serious crowd a block away from the school that hosts our poll. There were clear crowds of people walking in its direction. Earlier in the day, the Profesora'd pointed out that its location was obvious from the thickest ring of political signs we've seen yet, but now we could see crowds converging. I wasn't surprised to see the crowd. Politics is popular in Austin, for the same reason films are big in LA, and books are big in NY, because it's a big local industry. And this was a once-in-a-geneartion event.

Sure enough, the school was full to bursting. The line ending up snaking all through the medium-sized school and going out the back door. The biggest problem I saw was that they escalated numbers of registrars too slowly. There were two when we came in - one for Clinton, one for Obama. After far too long a wait, they doubled the registrars. After another half hour, they doubled them again to eight, and then things finally went quickly. We got there at 7, the event was supposed to start at 7:15, they opened doors at 7:45, and they finally finished with the line, and the caucus finally revved up up at 9:30. Toward the end, delegate volunteer sheets were sent around on each side.

I was expecting they'd put us in the cafeteria, with those kinds of numbers, but they thought of a different high-capacity spot: the auditorium. Like a wedding, the room was divided into the two sides.

The kid was there, fascinated at the scene and refusing to sleep. He was nothing like the only kid there, of course. My Mom told me that I got to watch Armstrong land on the moon at the kid's current age. No doubt I also refused to go to sleep.

When we got inside the school, we could see that there was a bigger Obama crowd than Hillary crowd, about 2/3 Obama, I estimated. The Hillary crowd, unsurprisingly, was unhappy at being outnumbered, but was classy about it. I wasn't surprised - Obama clicks well with Austin culture and ways of doing things, and I'd projected that kind of ratio months ago. There were no undecided or unpopular-candidate voters there.

The caucus was in a formal meeting style, using Robert's Rules of Order. It first elected a chairman and secretary (from the Obama side). Then we split into sides, and each side agreed to accept the written delegate lists. We elected a delegate secretary to take responsibility for the delegate lists.

The count ended up being 0.66 for Obama - exactly as I'd guessed, bwahaha. Obama got 39 next-level delegates, and Hillary 22, of which they were having more trouble filling (we had 39 delegates and 6 alternates, and they had 19 delegates). Most people had gone home after just signing in to get their names in, and I guess it's a little emotionally harder to hang in there when you're a polical minority, so no surprise more Clinton supporters left. Unlike elsewhere in TX, our caucus results were very like the primary results - 64% instead of 66%.

I was proud of my caucus - aside from adapting slowly to the 20x attendance growth from all earlier experience, it went smoothy and calmly. The adults acted like adults. As near as I could tell, both sides were treated fairly. Both sides had plenty of trained help. I'm sorry for those who had different experiences. The Profesora, says, rightly, that the caucus system lends itself to trouble. We'd both prefer a straight primary, fun as the night was. We both both agreed to be delegates, so hopefully there'll be a followup County-Convention-blog, though we were warned that it's boring. The Profesora was bugged that she'd been undecided when she woke up, and now she was a delegate. I told her, "democracy in action."