veiled4allah: grass-roots politics

This evening I attended the general meeting of the Democratic party in my legislative district. We met in a local public library. This was my first time attending a meeting and everybody was very welcoming to the Muslim in their midst.

We discussed the recent primary elections and how various Democratic candidates did, then heard reports on meetings of the state and county Democratic party central committees. The state central committee had passed a resolution in support of paper trails for electronic voting machines. This led into a long discussion about Diebold and Bev Harris's allegations. Everybody there seemed very well-informed on this issue, and also very concerned about the possibility of election fraud. Our county uses optical scan machines with ballots that look like those ScanTron sheets you use for standardized tests. When there is a recount (and there have been a couple in the last few years), the original ballot sheets are counted by hand. It would be better to have a paper receipt of what the ballot was recorded as, but in the event of a close election, people will be manually counting the actual ballots we cast, which is a relief to know. And since the county recently upgraded their machines, they're unlikely to spend a lot of money to buy the new touch-screen voting machines from Diebold, which are what's so problematic.

Another topic discussed was Initiative 841, which would repeal important workplace safety laws that protect workers from ergonomic injuries. You can read about it here. Later in the meeting we voted to go on the record as opposing the initiative; the vote was pretty much a formality since we were unanimous in opposition to it.

Following this was a guest speaker, who happened to be a volunteer with the Kucinich campaign. She gave a nice little talk about why she's supporting Kucinich. Besides myself there were two other people there who were strong Kucinich supporters and the group as a whole seemed receptive to learning about him.

The last major item on the agenda was the caucuses. Like the better-known Iowa, Washington state uses caucuses to select delegates to the presidential nominating convention. Since 1989, Washington has also had a primary and a complicated scheme for using both the caucuses and the primary to select delegates. All primaries in the state are "blanket primaries". This means that anybody can vote for a candidate of any party. You are not required to register as a member of a political party in order to vote for candidates from that party. On September 15 of this year, the 9th Circuit Federal Court of Appeals found that the blanket primaries are unconstitutional (PDF). Meanwhile, the Democratic National Committee didn't like the scheme for selecting delegates, which they felt was too complicated. The Washington state Democrats didn't want to go with the primary in 2004 since with Bush running unopposed, there'd be nothing to stop Republicans from crossing over to vote for whichever Democratic candidate they thought was leasy likely to win (based on freeping patterns on the web, probably Al Sharpton). So the state Democratic party decided to select all delegates by caucus and issued a delegate plan on September 16 (Word document). In the latest plot twist, the primary may be canceled altogether since the Republicans don't need it and it would be meaningless towards the Democratic selection process.

So at the meeting we discussed what the latest news is, then began planning for the caucuses, which will be held on February 7, 2004. The district has been divided into eight regions, each with between 16 and 21 precincts and estimated to have around 2000 identified Democratic voters. A site in each region for the caucuses will need to be selected and reserved and arrangements made for people to run the things.

One of the last things we discussed, briefly, was the Plame affair. The fellow who manages the group's website had put together a handout called "Why the Valerie Plame Affair is Important". It includes an excerpt of the PBS interview with former CIA analyst Larry Johnson (the one who said "it sickens me to be a Republican to see this"); an excerpt from a Washington Post online chat with another analyst, Mel Goodman; an excerpt from Hardball featuring RNC chairman Ed Gillespie saying if this is true, it's worse than Watergate; and also this CalPundit post (yay, blogosphere!)

I had a good time at the meeting. The people there share my views and my concerns. They were also very welcoming to me. The district chair came over to talk to me during the break and learn more about me and a couple who had seen me waiting for the bus earlier on my way to the meeting gave me a ride home and offered to give me a ride to future meetings if they're attending.