Democracy in action

[geoviki]

Can I just tell you how unique-and-speshul-snowflaky the Colorado caucus system is?

Colorado gets nostalgic for holding caucuses from time to time, and this was one of the times. So instead of going to a nice voting booth sometime during the day or evening and flipping a switch, we have to assemble as a group of like-minded neighbors and do it all together, publicly. In our precinct, 64 people showed up (a record, but I don't know how many are in the precinct all told), and we were crowded into a public school library. Then we got read a bunch of rules, had a straw man vote, and a final vote for our candidate of choice. Next, a subset of each candidate's supporters - by relative percentage - gets elected to the county level, where they'll do the same thing, then on to the state. We also were presented with three positions to support or not - one was whether or not to encourage impeachment of GWB and Cheney. That one actually caused a lot of debate but was voted down (not that we didn't have fantasies of it happening for a moment or two, but the pragmatists among the group held sway).

It took us about 2 hours start to finish, including trying to find a parking spot in the mass of humanity. There were other precincts having caucuses there, as well as the other party's precincts.

If our area is any indication, a lot of people came to their local caucuses tonight, most of them for the first time ever. The election itself is going to be a madhouse at this rate, but luckily Colorado has unlimited absentee ballots, so I'll vote at my dining room table, thank you very much. (We need extra time because we always have a fuckton of ballot initiatives and constitutional amendments to decide, too).

So my take: interesting. I'd rather flip the switch in private, though.

Comments

[secretsolitaire.livejournal.com]

Honestly, the whole election process is bizarre, nonsensical and frankly unfair in about a million ways. I don't know how we elect the leader of the free world this way!

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

I wholeheartedly agree. Even the caucus system isn't as horrific as the Electoral College.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Aw, I kind of like caucuses. It's like a Tupperware party.

Did you not have a poll for Mark Udall vs. The Guy Running Against Udall? And you only had three resolutions? We had one that had been submitted ahead of time, but our caucus was speshul and we came up with four more.

Then we went down to Carver's for beers.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Funny enough, the caucus runners came up with the wrong opponent when we did that straw poll, so I'm still not clear who the opponent is, but it's not Jared Polis as she soon learned. We were a big Udall crowd, apparently.

Sixty-four people are way too many to have a proper discussion, to tell you the truth. We were all separated from each other by dividers and bookcases in the library, and of course the chairs were wee and tiny. Our neighborhood skews older as well - my age and up, primarily (heh! a pun!). No beer for us.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

You will not hear any disagreement from me. I read a quote last night (paraphrasing here): Democracy is not distinguised by the voting but by the counting. And we saw what happened before with that.

[aliciajd]

We're having our first caucus this Saturday in Nebraska. It promises to be mass confusion.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

If it's anything like Colorado, prepare for crowds and lack of parking wherever you need to go. Because people wanted to come out and speak up after the past 8 years.

[aliciajd]

My dad and I are having a debate about whether to go. He has a great deal of difficulty walking and has voted by absentee in recent years and it's so icy here now. So he's afraid we won't be able to get him close enough to safely walk into the school where it's being held. Also, he's going to vote for Obama and I'm for Hillary. But, we are both happy to vote for the other's candidate in the general election if they win the democratic nomination. So knowing that we'll cancel each other out, we may not go. But... I'd really like to go see this form of voting in action. It will probably boil down to the weather on Saturday.

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Good grief. No one would turn up if they did that here.

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

You would if you had our president!

[no-mad-skillz.livejournal.com]

You would if you had our president!

Absolutely fucking word.

[spark-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

I've had the whole voting system explained to me at least twice and by two different people too, and I still have no idea what the blokes on CNN are blathering on about. :blush: We have low voting numbers and our voting takes about twenty minutes tops of your Sunday morning. I image how much lower we'd go it it were a year-long procedure...

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Every major election gets more convoluted. I think they should probably just give up and run it like American Idol. Have try-outs and Simon Crowell and the whole lot.

[spark-of-chaos.livejournal.com]

Fuuniest part? They'd probably get better people that way, too.

[frayach-nicuill.livejournal.com]

Intriguing! I'm glad you explained this because I've never lived in a caucus state and never quite understood how it works. It sounds kind of fun, actually (although also kind of annoying if you're pressed for time ). How did you 64 people "find" each other? Are you just supposed to show up at a particular place at a particular time if you support a particular candidate?

[geoviki.livejournal.com]

Everyone is divvied up into precincts - even you, I suspect (check your registration card). We couldn't quite work out the total precinct size - maybe 200 registered Dems? You need to be registered within a party (i.e., not independent) in order to vote in a caucus. So you check out ahead of time where you're supposed to go. And everyone supporting any Democrat shows up at the Democratic precinct caucus, and all the voting is done by raising your hand in front of all your neighbors as they announce the candidate. The whole notion of a secret ballot is out the window - in fact, the rules state that there cannot be any voting done in secret.