This weekend I participated in my first caucus. It was crowded, noisy, and hot, but a wonderful experience. Occuring after Super Tuesday, Washington's caucus typically doesn't count for much. This year was different.
So the brief recap of how it all went down:
Our precinct had 100 voters (there were 6 precincts total at the school we were in). As you sign in, you have to declare your candidate of choice (or declare to be uncommitted). When our caucus began, we had 75 votes for Obama, 14 for Clinton, and 11 uncommitted - means 4 of our 5 delgates would go to Obama and 1 to Clinton. People were then allowed to speak for 1 minute about their candidate of choice. It was really interesting to hear people's opinions, which were all well-thought out and often began with "I'd be happy with either as our president, but..." After everyone who wanted to spoke, people were able to change their vote (79 Obama, 16 Clinton, and the rest stayed uncommitted) and we still had 4 to 1 delegates, Obama to Clinton. From the people who voted for each candidate, we voted to select the delegates who would go to the district convention to represent our precinct (my roommate being one!). I thought it was really cool that our 4 delegates were all young - under the age of 30 - representative of the demographic that Obama is really inspiring.
Final thoughts: caucus are way more fun that primaries!
Sunday, February 10, 2008
Let's Caucus!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
that sounds so cool! it seems much more fun that our mundane primary.
Way to put it in laymen's terms - I never really got the gist of a caucus until now! Thanks for the recap.
jealous!!! That sounds WAY better than filling in a little bubble next to a candidates name! I'm so moving to Washington.
Post a Comment