This morning I was at the precinct caucus, which was pretty entertaining. I think what struck me more than anything was the relative lack of anyone who knew what was going on. I had seen some of that in the Iowa caucus I had watched on C-Span, but here in Washington it was even more chaotic.

I arrived only a few minutes before 10 a.m., which is when the caucus was scheduled to start, so I figured there wouldn't be many arriving after me, but that was not the case. Apparently 10:00 wasn't a strict deadline, and they kept signing people in until the lines ran out (which makes sense). There were several precincts caucusing in the same location, a high school cafeteria. Once we got inside, there were tables set up for each precinct. At first, there were only about a dozen of us at our precinct station, and we sat around for a long time wondering what to do. Our Precinct C-??-- Officer (PCO) was at the front desk signing people in, but we didn't know that yet.

Some of the more energized attendees started discussing their candidates, as if to try to sway votes, though as far as I could tell no one at the table was undecided. Among the vocal ones was one Dean supporter ("Shay", possibly spelled wrong) who had a calm and gregarious demeanor which, I soon realized, would be more persuasive than my prickly allegro marcato. She had a copy of the rules but no aptitude for math, so I figured I'd look it over so I could figure out whom she needed to target to make an actual difference in delegates selected. The rules were written out as a series of instructions -- write down this number, multiply it by that, etc., sort of like a tax form -- but after looking over the algorithm, I could see what the formula was and calculate accordingly. It was pretty much the same thing that I had seen on C-Span at Iowa.

At this point, we still didn't know what was going on, so I kept calculating and recalculating the tally as more people trickled in. There was a guy at the far end of the cafeteria who was supposedly coordinating the entire room (I think maybe it was every precinct within our state legislative district) [*], but we could rarely hear anything he said. Finally, the PCO showed up at our tables. She brought with her the sign-in sheet, which was the only useful thing she provided. Throughout the whole process she was slow, fumbling, unassertive, and not at all clear in explaining what was going on. The others were waiting for her to take charge, but she was neither strong nor informed enough to provide any guidance.

While they were fumbling about, I made a tally from the sign-in sheet, which included a declaration of which candidate each voter was supporting. There were 29 present, aligned 12 Dean, 6 Kerry, 6 Kucinich, 4 Edwards, 1 uncommitted. I already knew from the rules sheet that our precinct was to choose three delegates. Being quite fluent in the formula by now, I saw right away that each delegate would be had for 9 1/3 votes, and the four Edwards votes would not count unless they rounded up a fifth.

Looking at the totals, Shay and other Dean supporters thought that would mean two delegates for Dean, since he had twice as many votes as either of the others, but that wasn't the case. Setting aside the 9 1/3 for the first delegate, Dean had 2 2/3 counting toward the second delegate whereas Kerry and Kucinich had 6 each. Thus the only thing that was going to make a difference was if Dean gathered four of the unviable votes, in which case he'd get two delegates and whichever K didn't get the fifth would be left out. Short of voters abandoning a viable candidate for no good strategic reason, any other result was going to split the three delegates one each. [Or so I thought; see postscript below.] This matched what all of my preliminary counts along the way had said: a small chance for Dean to upgrade to two delegates, but most likely a three-way split.

I had all this figured this out while the PCO was still trying to count her own tally, and I explained it to Shay and to the five or six others who wanted to hear it. Most of the people wanted to hear an explanation from an official source, ie the PCO, which was understandable, except that in our case my math was correct and the PCO was muddle-headed. Consequently, there was a whole lot of bargaining over votes that weren't going to make a difference. In reality, our situation was pretty simple. As it stood, the three candidates would get one delegate each. If Kerry and/or Kucinich could get one more voter, that candidate's one delegate would be secure. If Dean could recruit four of the five uncommitted (including the Edwards voters), Dean would get a second delegate.

This is the point where organization might have made a difference. I had figured that getting four votes over to Dean was unlikely, so I was mostly just observing the fray. In retrospect, it might have been achievable. The uncommitted guy went to Dean almost immediately. Of the four Edwards voters, one strongly preferred Kucinich as a second choice, and one (Lara, who later became our Dean delegate) strongly supported Dean as a second choice. I lost track of the other two Edwards supporters, because we never did get ourselves collected into groups as I saw on C-Span. If they were open to persuasion, someone might have recruited them for Dean, getting him two delegates. Judging from the final totals, I'm guessing they went to Kerry, but even that isn't very clear.

That's because the PCO had further muddled things with bogus instructions. When she finally arrived at her totals (which matched mine: surprise!) she announced to the group that nine votes were required per delegate: Dean already had one delegate. The other two, she said, remained unclaimed, but Kerry or Kucinich could get one by adding a few more votes. This was, to state it charitably, a peculiar way of describing the situation. She then added that she hoped several would switch to Kerry since he's the man to beat George Bush. Some of us thought that was tacky, but I guess that's one of the benefits of being the PCO.

At this point I lost track of what was going on for a while. We had never aligned ourselves into groups, so it was hard to see who had switched. Instead, the PCO and the person elected as secretary (in retrospect, that's what I should have volunteered to be) were making adjustments to the list. That was the instruction given by the cafeteria-wide guy, who by now had come up with a microphone, but they weren't keeping up with every change as it was made. By the time I figured this out and saw the list again, Dean's total had actually declined. Apparently, some Dean supporters moved to Kerry and Kucinich, under the mistaken impression that if they didn't we wouldn't get our extra delegates at all. Also, I think the PCO was quicker to record the switches toward Kerry, because she was right there negotiating them, whereas other switches were being done out of her field of view.

But by the time the dust had settled, the totals were back to where they were headed all along, 14 Dean, 8 Kerry, and 7 Kucinich, with the delegates split one apiece.

Choosing the delegates was yet another muddle. I never saw the rules on this so I don't know what was supposed to happen, but the three groups gathered up into separate clumps (finally), and each group was instructed to choose its own delegate and alternate from its midst. I had assumed that Shay would be our delegate since she was the closest we had to a team leader, and she had schmoozed with everyone in the group. But she became modest and asked if anyone else wanted to be a delegate. I said I'd be willing to serve, but I'd be happy to defer to her. Another guy (Justin) said the same thing. Lara, the former Edwards supporter, also expressed interest.

With four candidates now, someone in our group suggested that since none of us here knew each other, we should draw names at random. I thought that was a pretty screwy idea, and I'm pretty sure Lara did too. I also disagreed with the premise, since I thought I had a pretty good idea of what everyone there was like, and based on that I was ready to support Lara who struck me as the most intelligent and thoughtful person there. But none of us seemed eager to make any sort of speech to promote himself or herself (least of all me), so I figured we may as well roll the dice and maybe I'll get to go to the district caucus. So draw we did, and on that basis our delegate is Lara, and our alternate is Justin.

According to the rules, the alternates are to be ranked according to their support in the caucus, which means that Justin should go to the district caucus if the chosen delegate from any of the three camps becomes unavailable. That was never explained clearly, and I think the others assumed that each alternate is assigned to a particular delegate. In theory, there's a paper trail that will sort this out should a dispute arise, but come to think of it, I'm not convinced that our PCO got all the papers written up properly either.

But at this point I didn't care enough to dispute it, and I was ready to go home. Thus ended my first experience in nitty-gritty participatory democracy. One thing I can see is having influence over one's neighbors can easily make a difference. If I could have rounded up just two or three friends to tag along and vote with me, it could have made an additional delegate for Dean. Then again, how much difference would that make at the final convention? Very little.

Postscript: As I proofread this, I realize that there actually was one other possibility that could have happened. I was calculating that neither the Kucinich nor Kerry supporters would have any reason to abandon their candidate, since a loss of even one vote would jeopardize the one delegate which was otherwise near certain. What didn't occur to me is that some Dean supporters, if it were clear that Dean wouldn't get a second delegate anyway, might peel off from Dean and join up with the Edwards camp to make his group not only viable but large enough to steal a delegate from Kerry or Kucinich.

Come to think of it, I might well have done that myself, especially if the one who got frozen out was Kerry (which it would have been, since several of the Dean people like Kucinich, and one would have switched to ensure he got the third delegate). It would have been pretty easy to do. All four of the Edwards people presumably would be happy to stick with their guy, so all it would take would be two more Dean votes to come with me, and I could have easily persuaded several that changing a Kerry vote into an Edwards vote benefits Dean. Not only that, but I probably could have made myself the Edwards delegate by engineering it. Then I could go to the district convention pledged to Edwards even though I really support Dean, which would have been a lot of fun.

Bugger. I wish I'd thought of that. I also wish I had copied down Lara's email so I could tell her about the opportunity we both missed. Oh well. Live and learn.

3:42:02 PM  [permalink]  comment []