Rock out with your Caucus Out

Or should it be Raucous with your Caucus?

I went to the Nevada caucus today. It was a little bizarre because it was at my old elementary school. And our precinct was in my old 6th grade classroom, so it totally brought back memories.

This was my first time going to a caucus. I've obviously voted before, but never done the whole caucus thing. It was an interesting experience that makes me wonder why we don't just do a primary.

First of all, I think I was in the wrong room. I didn't bother to look up what precinct number I was. But I brought my voting card that I got when I registered at 18. But apparently it was an old card and the numbers had changed. So the woman was asking where I live and what side of the lake I live on.

Is it bad that I don't know what direction I live in? (It turns out we live on the southeast side of Washoe lake). Ok, so I knew that we were in the south part of Washoe Valley, but I didn't know what side was east or west. ahahaha

So she said, why don't you try 8222. I went in and lo and behold they didn't have my name on the list. I thought maybe it was because I had voted in California in the last election.

It turns out I was just in the wrong room. Our precicnt is 8220, which was the room next door. Ooops! Oh well, it's not like it would have made much of a difference anyway. Since my name wasn't on the list, they made me fill out a new voter registration. So maybe I'll get a new card in the mail?

The room was packed! We ended up having 85 people in our little room, which made me think what the capacity was and whether I should call a fire marshall to report a safety violation.

After everyone was packed in, we started. Our "temporary" chair explained the process, which is all kind of weird. It also made me realize that old people should not be allowed to vote. Here's why:

We had to get a head count, which in a room with this many people was no easy task. We ended up standing up and saying a number to count off. Yes, because we were in an elementary school classroom, we had to do it old skoool counting.

As we're going around the room, some of the old people got confused. At one point, this old man was supposed to say 60, but he shouts "SEVENTY" instead. To which everyone laughs heartily. But seriously, I wonder how many other rooms had this problem.

The whole thing is based on MATH (SO EVIL). So if we didn't have an accurate head count, the whole thing gets thrown off. After that, they decide what 15% of the total is. In our case I think it was 13. So each group had to have at least 15% or 13 people for that candidate to be "viable". If that candidate wasn't "viable" those people had to join a 2nd group.

After we counted, we physically divided into different groups. The poor Kucinich people only had 4 in their group. They immediately went and joined Obama. The bastards!

After grouping, we had to count again. Honestly, if I knew there was so much math involved I would have just stayed in bed. Our group seemed to have all of the old people, so we had to count THREE times. Again, the old people would forget what was going on. As we were trying to count the Clinton supporters, one old man said "I already said my number" referring to the first group count we did. To which we had to explains several times that we were just counting Hillary supporters. After several rounds of counting we finally came to a number.

But then it turned out that the room was off. At first we were missing 3 people. So we recounted groups. Then we were missing 2 people. So we counted again and some groups were counting other groups to check their math. Finally we were missing 1 person, at which point the chair decided that we would just subtract a person from the overall total.


In the end Edwards had 15, Clinton had 23 and Obama had 45. Which means from our room, Edwards got 1 delegate, Clinton got 2 and Obama got 3.

I ended up joining the Hillary group. I was so conflicted about it. I like Edwards but don't think he has a chance. I really like Hillary, but I'm worried that she's too polarizing and may not get elected if she wins the nomination. And I can't stand another 4 years of a republican. And I don't like Obama. He's got charisma, but no substance.

And the fact that he was praising Ronald Reagan and bashing Bill Clinton recently makes me mad. Plus there's that whole thing where he went on tour with an anti-gay preacher. That is not ok with me. He sold out the gay community in order to get in good with the black evangelicals. As much as Hillary might do to get elected, she never did that.

Now I almost know how Nader supporters felt. Do they vote for the candidate who they love or do they vote for the one who can get elected? But if it came down to it, I'd still vote for Obama for a republican.

I thought Al Gore was supposed to sweep in any day now and declare his candidacy. What's going on? Or is he going to do it West Wing style and wait until the convention and then try to sway delegates with a passionate speech. That would be awesome!