My response was to tell him I do both. I have waved signs on the street corner for the school levy. I have sat in on the committees to pick new Principals for the children's schools. I have been part of round tables for choosing the direction the Mayor wants to go with the community. Years of PTA had honed my committee skills. You can't get much more local than that. I was still disgruntled he wouldn't go with me.
I have never attended a Caucus. I am not some one who will sit and listen to the news say the public is apathetic or uninformed, without going out and educating myself to prove them wrong. Learning, watching, seeing, I thought it would be enlightening to attend my local precinct caucus.
Tom was right in one regard, all walks of life showed up. Old men and women in walkers and canes and wheel chairs, families with small children and babies. Most were very casually dressed. Of course, I dressed up in nylons and a dress, not knowing what to expect, but I was one of the rare few.
I had let it be known who my preference was, through a cold call solicitation, as a result over the last few weeks I have been inundated with phone calls and e-mails to please come and get involved. They needed me. They needed the body count for our candidate
The doors were supposed to lock at 10:00 am, but the turnout was tremendous. The line of humanity went round the building then snaked back. There was no way they could get all of us checked in before 10:00 am. I saw a man come out of a side entrance. He was talking to some people in the line. Soon small numbers were going in this side door. I slipped out of line to ask. Turns out if you had your voters card with you with the precinct listed on it, you could cut in line, since they didn't have to look you up in the computer and tell you your precinct. Being the organized woman I am. I had followed the advice in one of those e-mails and brought my voters card and photo ID. I was in. I could go through the short line.
ID was checked, my neighborhood letter was stamped on my hand. Now the next phase was to find my table in the mass of humanity. The tables were supposed to be in alphabetical order but I couldn't tell as I wondered through the building looking for my neighborhood table. Finally, I spotted the name on a card on a table in the middle front. This building is a huge expo center, the room is as big as a football field. Jammed full of people, easily over 1000 people if not half again that many.
The leader of our group is one of the people that I have been getting e-mails from. He knows my house as we all, at our table, live in the same neighborhood. We are also sharing the table with another neighborhood, so we are crammed in, standing room only, around this table. The noise of voices flow.
A call to order and a prayer opens the meeting. Then we do the Pledge. People are still trying to find their tables. We hold up our sign to help locate more from our neighborhood. There is an instruction sheet on the table for us to follow. We need a secretary and a leader. Our table leader that has been assisting us gets his title officially voted as leader for our neighborhood. He asks me to be secretary. Recognizing many years of PTA has helped me negotiate in committees, I am enjoying the moment. I think he saw me as a good leader and foil for him. He is an older gentleman. The chaos in the room was making him edgy. He knows me, as he is one of the e-mailers I have been in correspondence with.
Now, the idea of a caucus is to choose the delegates and alternate delegates to represent your neighborhood in the next level, the county. Everyone that came to this caucus has stated a preferred candidate when they signed in.You can be undecided, but no one was at our table. The idea is to pick delegates that will vote for your preferred candidate. We have 13 people from our neighborhood. 9 were Romney supporters, 3 were Ron Paul, and one was Santorum.
One neighbor wants to make sure that the delegates chosen represent the percentages. He got the correct idea that you could potentially load the delegation with a minor party choice against popular vote. It was a numbers game.
I said, in the position of secretary, that we could take any one as a candidate for delegate to vote on, I just needed their names. We would announce their affiliation and then vote. His problem was no one was thrilled to be a delegate. He had to bully a couple of his neighbors that had the same choice in candidate to put their names up for delegate.
As it was, for my candidate, we didn't even have enough bodies at the table to fill the roster. Those e-mails had been begging for bodies who voted like minded. 13 neighbors, 10 spots to fill, with 5 delegates and 5 alternates. We needed almost everyone regardless of affiliation. The order of delegates didn't matter, but the alternates did matter if you wanted to keep the support of your candidate equal. If a delegate couldn't make the next meeting, the first alternate would step up. The candidate needed to have that alternate be his supporter to hang on to that delegate seat. Tricky.
The one strong personalities neighbor got it quickly, and wanted to make sure of the selections and voting. It wasn't cantankerous as we were really going to turn out equitably distributed anyway, only having 13 people and 10 slots to fill. One poor mousy woman wouldn't even vote for herself when she was bullied into putting in her name as a delegate, for the purposes of trying to achieve that optimal split, then when she lost because she wouldn't vote for herself, her name was put in again as an alternate, and lost again. I felt so sorry for her. But I wasn't going to vote for her if she wasn't going to vote for herself. She wouldn't have been effective representing anyone.
After we were done voting, a couple of people wanted to rearrange the order. I talked them out of it, one reason was it wasn't necessary, the order of the alternates still kept the candidate support the same, secondly, and most importantly, it was against the rules to rearrange the order to suite. Our leader looked at me gratefully. It is always hard to work with determined and strong willed people to blend their wants to the needs of everyone. I was just glad to have some others in the group that did have strong thoughts and cared. I see too many that are apathetic or just walk through life with their heads bowed and meek. But I guess those are the ones we are here to protect, but not at the punishment of the strong and determined either.
I wish that mousy woman had just a little more back bone. We needed her as she was a supporter of my candidate. But I couldn't support someone who wouldn't even support herself. I would have walked all over her unintentionally. So would the other delegates, making her miserable. She was miserable already having to put her name in. She was being forced to do something she didn't want to do, it was obvious. I saved her some more misery by not voting for her even though we needed her vote.
We were done. Some tables that had had a bigger turn out were still voting delegates. Ours had been pretty easy. Our leader was disappointed because he didn't get as many delegates as he wanted for his candidate, but that was how the numbers rolled. I think of my neighborhood and all those houses and how many people did not show up. I wonder if they are democrats and going to continue to vote for this administration.
Our hope is that by supporting the underdog, our candidate might have some influence on the party platform, even if he doesn't come close to getting the big party vote. At some point though we will have to throw in with the big boys for a united front, or we wont have a chance. I just want them to know that we still have opinions that need to be heard.
I should end with letting you know that I did make fifth delegate, but as I said only three people were going to be turned down and it was hard enough to come up with the volunteers. There is even an alternate written in and voted that wasn't at the meeting just so we could get the roster filled.
The next meeting is in April. If anything, attending the caucus is a fascinating layering of bureaucracy, and quite the learning experience. I also realize that few people really step up and care enough to truly become involved. People make the least amount of effort possible to keep this country staggering along. It was a little time out of an otherwise quiet day. I enjoyed the novelty of it, to see the system at work.
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The thing is if you don't attend this first precinct caucus, it is now too late to get involved. Your neighbors have now chosen their delegates. The game is set. The numbers only get smaller from here. The next weeding of delegates is in April and I will probably get out of it at that point. I was not voting for the favorite, so I probably wont make the next cut. It was fascinating though. I have to say I did enjoy myself.
The icing on the cake was coming out to find, in the next room over, an auction going on. I was sorry to say I had missed the silent auction, as it had ended before we got out of our caucus. I sat in hoping to win a power washer, but I was out bid. I left to head home to have the rest of the day quiet and uneventful.
I came home to my family still not dressed, just schlepping around. Tom had suggested bowling, but with Trevor's toe still healing from his nail removal on Thursday, I thought it best not to have him stick it in a dirty used bowling shoe. The bandages are still wrapped around the toe making it difficult to fit shoes as it was. Trevor had to miss sports on Friday and the cooks said he couldn't work in the cafeteria in sandals, no open toed shoes. We will see how his toe is on Monday
I took a long nap and enjoyed the rest of my day. Tom thanked me later by giving him his own down day as a result.
Tom wanted steak for dinner so I had Riley drive me to the store for a quick small shopping trip. Meat, toilet paper, milk, $225 later we are headed home. I read an article that said in the last three years our standard of living has fallen off 20%. You can look at it the other way that the cost of living has gone up 20%. It still hurts either way. Imagine being out of work or working a below family wage job. That was just a small shopping trip, nothing excessive. I didn't even sneak in things we didn't need. It makes me feel good about attending the caucus. At least I am trying to figure it out, makes me feel a little less helpless.
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