Road To Denver

The delegation is on the county level…last night’s caucus was pretty much a precinct convention. From there you select delegates to represent your precinct at county, then state, then the national democratic convention. It was tiring, educational, and exciting all at once.

The process seemed to be grueling for those individuals who did not choose to educate themselves on the process before the evening. Many thought it was a show up sign in and leave situation…that is not the case here in TX. You show up to your precincts designated caucus headquarters. Caucus cannot officially start until the last ballot is cast in your precinct…and some Houston voters were still signing in this morning.

The primary poll judge gave us the agenda for the night. The first order of the night was to elect a precinct chair. We chose to elect the precinct judge because she understood the process, and we were trying to get things started. So we also had to elect a secretary and supervisors to facilitate and oversee the sign-in…now this was the hard part of the night, hundreds of people wanting to sign in to show support for their candidate…but in the state of TX to participate in the caucus you must be a registered voter that voted in the primary. So everyone had to be checked against the book before they could sign a sheet, noting name, voter number, address, and which candidate they supported. That was the longest part of the evening. During the sign-in we also began to split into the individual caucuses, there were not any undeclared voters, so everyone was either for Hillary of Obama…we now had two separate caucus groups. Out of the hundreds of people who signed in, only 52 stayed to actually participate in the caucus. So at this point, we are chit chatting and awaiting the voting tally for our precincts caucus. Out of the 34 delegates, Obama received 21 and Hillary received 13. So now we had to determine who would be the delegates supporting our precinct at the county convention. Things ran smoothly at this point, the older more experienced caucus members were very supportive of us newbies that wanted to participate. So we just did a show of hands, noting who wanted to be a delegate.

I met a couple of individuals that have several years experience as delegates and caucus chairs. They are going to really be a resource during this process. My mother has also been a delegate previously, and is currently an Obama delegate. Well, I think we all know I am a Hillary delegate. :D But we have nothing but the upmost support for each other. That’s the beauty of it…I caucused with a sr. couple whose daughter was on the other side of the room with Obama.

We also had 50 resolutions on the books that were supposed to be review before end of the night. At this point it was already 9:45 pm, there was a motion on the floor to move the resolutions up to county and we can deal with them at the county convention on March 29^th.

I had fun, and this is my first of what I hope to be many…I am trying to become a super delegate. :D

But for now my goal is to make it to Denver in 2008!