Tonight I participated in my first political caucus.
When I voted this morning, I knew that McCain would win, and I voted for Fred Thompson anyway, since he was on the ballot. When I showed up at the polls I wished I had brought a camera. There were the usual political yard signs the requisite 100 feet from the polls. Some said "Vote Republican" another said "Democrates vote here" -- Yes. They misspelled Democrat! And there were several of those signs.... I couldn't believe it. I wish I had my camera, because when I went back to the polls for the caucus that night, all the signs were gone.
The caucus is where it got interesting.
They separated us into two adjacent rooms. One for the Democrats, one for the Republicans.
There were nearly 100 Democrats, and only 9 Republicans. I know for a fact that some of the Democrats were really Republicans who had crossed lines for the primary.
I was the first Republican to show up, and the precinct judge handed me a packet of paperwork and said "It should all be straightforward" then left... I read through it and passed it to someone else who had shown up, figuring that a precinct chairman or someone in the know would show up. We waited until 7:45, the nine of us.
The Democrat side got loud. I heard a lot of whining and complaining from people... From what I understand talking to someone who had crossed over and voted democrat, there were 11 Hillary people to each Obama person in that room.
One guy who was deaf in the Democratic caucus room had arrived before 7pm when the polls closed and didn't vote (apparently he was too stupid to figure it out). When they closed the doors to the poll, and realized what had happened, he wanted to vote. The officials had already turned away other late comers. One frizzy-haired woman in the Democratic caucus room got all upset and said he had the right to vote since he was here before 7pm. She made a big stink about it. Other people in the room got upset because others had been turned away so why did he deserve special treatment?
The precinct chair for the Democratic side was wearing a T-shirt with a big Obama logo on it and that ticked off a lot of the Hillary supporters. She tried to impose some order and arguments broke out. One woman said "Don't let her tell you that, she's just trying to keep you from voting for Hillary" or something to that effect...People didn't understand the process and were upset. I suppose I would have been too, I didn't understand it either. It was very poorly explained.
I learned that in addition to the name and the candidate supported, each democrat also had to indicate what their race, sex, age and number of children she had was. They also had to indicate if the person was gay/lesbian/transsexual.... It was pretty odd.
Meanwhile, we in the Republican caucus we struggling through the paperwork, trying to figure out what to do. None of us had ever been in a caucus before. I had figured there would be someone from our precinct who was knowledgeable... nope.
So we finally figured out for ourselves what to do. We elected a chairman, and a secretary. Then we found we were allowed to send 14 delegates to the county convention at the end of the month.
On our forms we filled out, We only had to provide our voter ID number, your name, address, phone, and E-mail. No references to our status as gay/lesbian/transsexual...
So guess what? I'm a Republican party delegate for Galveston county along with all the other 8 folks that showed up. It seems my political career has begun. May God have mercy on my soul.
We finished filling out the paperwork, had the chairman we elected and the secretary we elected sign the papers, sealed them up and the chairman will take them to Galveston tomorrow (he has three days). I got to meet a few people in the area I didn't know before, and I realized that many Democrats in my precinct are loud annoying people with victim mentalities...