I wrote the following letter to my father describing the scene from the Colorado caucus floor. He's never been to a caucus and I had never been to one either. I found it to be both a hectic and an exhilirating process.
If you've never been to a caucus before you might want to follow below the fold for a glimpse into this amazing process.
Well I went to my first caucus last night. Absolutely amazing! This is what democracy is all about. What an incredible process. I was the precinct captain for the Obama campaign. They set up tables for every precinct and I was the first to arrive.
So I placed my campaign material on the table and within minutes the crowd began to arrive. I began looking overy my checklist and began explaining to people how the caucus process worked. The hall quicly filled up, we were smashed together like so many bananas in a bunch. Our first duty was to elect a precinct chairman and secretary. I was elected chariman by unanimous vote of the 35 people from my precinct.
Then we did our straw poll, overwhelmingly in favour of Obama. Then we did our formal vote, 29 for Obama, 6 for clinton. We did the caucus math and came up with 7 delegates to be assinged for Obama and one for Clinton.
Then we had to elect our delegates. We were allotted 7 for Obama but 9 people wanted to be delegates. So we put our names in a hat and decided to throw out the first two we drew, everyone else in the hat would be a delegate.
My name was the first one drawn from the hat, but everyone wanted me to be a delegate so they voted again unananimously for me to be assigned as a delegate. I even told them all this was not a requirement. I did not have to go, but all 35, even the Clinton supporters wanted me to be one of the delegates.
So I've been elected as a delegate to the county democratic assembly in March. Oddly, I had decided earlier in the day that I did not want to be a delegate as I did not want to spend the time away from my family, but it's only a few days so what the heck.
Oh, we also voted for Mark Udall for Senate and we voted on a bunch of platform planks. Some of those planks were not well understood and we had vigorous discussions about them as those who did understand them well, were quite passionate.
People say caucuses are messy and disorganized, and I can certainly attest to that. But part of me keeps thinking this is real participatory democracy. Neighbors sitting down together to discuss the issues and cast their votes. I can't imagine anything more democratic, I believe the founding fathers would be proud.