UPDATE: Here is a link to my legislative district’s results (apparently I am in the Fightin’ 46th). Note how close my estimate is of attendance at Bryant Elementary. I estimated 1,000 and there were 1,110 of us. Not bad.

Today was my first experience at a Democratic Primary Caucus. Nevermind that I’ve lived in Seattle long enough to have attended 2 other caucuses, should I have chosen. I suppose the 2000 election it wouldn’t have mattered as much as we (thought we) had our man. Then by the ’04 election, well, hell I didn’t know what the hell a caucus was so I didn’t go. I don’t like to talk to neighbors much, so it seemed a bit too much for me. I’m from Connecticut. In Connecticut there is no caucus, just a primary. In Connecticut, specifically West Hartford, and specifically 12 years ago (OMG 12ish years ago) you walk into a voting booth, with one of those cool old-school machinery, the curtains close, choose your man (or woman), push down the lever, which automatically opens the curtains so you can exit and the next person enters in. Old-school.

Here in Seattle, it’s sheer chaos, one of the reasons I went permanent absentee ballot years ago.

But this is THE year to attend the caucuses. They are expecting record crowds, perhaps 75% more people than at the last election, which was also a record. Over at Bryant Elementary, I estimated the crowd to be at least 1,000 (maybe more like 1,200). Our precinct (46-2098) was one of about 10+ meeting in the gym. Couldn’t hear anything. The Democrats (bless them) couldn’t quite figure out the speaker system at first. Our precinct officer (bless her) did not exactly have a voice that could project. So this is how the caucus worked.

1. Arrive shortly before appointed time and get in line to enter the building. Behave. Act civil. Know your precinct number, and find your precinct (a couple of tables out of like 20 tables in the elementary school gym)
2. Don’t drink the water in the restroom (hey, that’s what the sign says)
3. Sign in. They want your name, signature, and most importantly who you’re voting for (or as they called it, your ‘presidential preference’)
4. Once everyone has signed in, the appointed tally officers tally up the votes of your precinct.
5. Once all of the precincts are done tallying, there were two speakers who spoke for about five minutes each in support of the two main candidates. Then one guy (the emcee, so to speak), spoke for the undecided. You can guess what the Obama and Clinton speakers said. The undecided guy was basically like, make a choice. Or not. Ha ha. Many jokes made about this.
6. Then, there is time allowed to change your presidential preference. I’d say no more than 10 people in that entire group raised their hands to change their vote. Could have been undecided voters. Could have been Obama to Hillary or vice versa.
7. Then, after the ‘change your mind time’ a second tally is taken.

Our first tally: 128 voters. 5 delegates to Obama, 2 to Hillary, 6 voters undecided

Our second tally: 129 voters (because if you did not make it for the first tally, your vote only counts in the second), 99 to Obama and 30 to Hillary. All of our undecideds chose a side. Still, 5 delegates went to Obama and 2 to Hillary.

So, there I thought we were done. But actually next you have to choose delegates. Delegates who will represent your precinct at some county caucus on April 5. If there are no delegate volunteers (and alternates for those delegates) then your delegate could be taken away from your precinct. So once it was decided that there were 10 volunteers for those Obama delegates, we left.

If you were wondering who I was caucusing for, well that last sentence should have given you the answer.

We are still waiting for final results. Which I imagine will be posted on the Election site at The Seattle Times. You can read more about what happened at various caucus sites from this “Citizen Report” from the Times. I’ll see if I can scrounge up our individual caucuses results (since we left before it was completely over.)

Some more pics:

At top: Caucusing at Bryant Elementary.

Middle: Tally officers tallying up the 128 votes in our precinct.

Left: Dorothy, our precinct officer, giving us instruction on what to do.