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What’s a Texas Caucus Anyway?

As confused about double dip voting in the Texas primaries as you may be, I

decided to go through the process down here in Dumbutt to figure it out for myself. Living in a very

white conservative suburb of Houston, the first thing I found was how easy it

was to get to the polling place.

In my case it was an elementary school that I could walk to. Speaking of

CHANGE… We need to change this process in which white Republicans do all

they can to make it easy for white Republicans to vote while making it as

hard as possible for everyone else!

The only difference in what you may have experienced in your primary was

that you must hang on to your little computer generated receipt if you want

to caucus later. It contains your precinct number and "DEM" on it.

Hillary, Barack and Michelle called me in the afternoon to remind me to go caucus at 7pm. None of them listened very well to what I had to say though.

Walking back to the school at 7pm I found several people out front covered in

Hillary and Obama buttons, shirts, hats and signs. They were outside because

the law says there will be no campaigning in a building where voting is still

going on. My ACDC shirt was okay so I proceeded into the caucus room which

was the school cafeteria. It was very crowded with people sitting and standing, few

of which had a clue as to what was going on. You had to show your stub to get

in.

Caucusing cannot begin until the last voter has voted. We had all waked past

the voting line and took notice that the last person in line was a woman in a

bright green dress. After about an hour we all saw her enter the cafeteria

and cheered though she had no idea why.

There were three separate precincts in the room which added a loud hub-bub to

the confusion of where we all belonged. Three people held up pieces of

paper that said 90, 69 and 113. We all looked at our little stubs and moved

to our proper areas. There were about a hundred for each.

Soon a woman in each area began shouting instructions that most people could

not hear. It soon became apparent we were to vote for people to do something

or other. Each of the three women nominated a secretary which was voted upon

unanimously with "AYE" and raised hands. Then our new secretary nominated the

woman as director and that was unanimously passed. Their jobs were to pass out

the forms, verify each person’s stub again, and later make the count.

They ran out of forms and began using yellow legal pads. We each wrote down

our name, address, phone, voting card code, candidate and whether we wanted

to become a delegate. After the forms were completed with about a dozen names

on each, the secretary went around and called the names to verify the person

to the stub once again. Then the director took all the forms and explained

some very complicated formulas regarding percentages of I have no idea what.

She sat at a table and counted. Soon she rose and said Obmaa 10, Hillary 11.

It was the first political outburst of the night with well intentioned

cheering and booing.

The director than told all the Obama people to sit over there and the Hillary

people to sit over here. Once everyone moved into their respective groups the director

said she was for Obama and that the Hillary people should come over to the

good side. The Hillary people booed, the Obama people cheered. This was the

actual caucus part of the caucus. It was all very good natured with lots of laughing and

chanting. What little back and forth their was caused me to say that I was

voting for Hillary mostly because I knew what I was getting. They yelled back about change. I yelled back that if they wanted change so much, come over here and change your vote to Hillary. It all

lasted about a minute until everyone realized no one was going to change a thing.

The Director then went to each group and asked who wanted to be delegates.

About the right number in each group stood and moved over with the director,

once they had 10 Obama’s and 11 Hillary’s we did the "AYE" and it was over.

Those 21 people would be going to the Pasadena convention center on March

29th to go through it all again, and then again in Houston and once more in

Austin to finalize the Caucus Delegates.

Having my voting age kids with me for this experience sold me on the idea

that the whole process should move toward caucusing rather than primaries.

What with us moving ever inward into our increasingly lonely world of

cellphones, cable tv and computers, the socialization of meeting new

people, seeing and talking to like minded neighbors is a far greater boon

to the process than standing alone over a little cubby hole punching buttons.