veiled4allah: a morning at the caucuses

I just got back from the caucus. I actually had a lot of fun. The Democratic party here is arranged by legislative district (districts which send representatives to the state legislature). Our legislative district divided itself into eight areas and a site in each area hosted the caucuses for all the precincts in the area (usually between 15 and 25 precincts).

My area held its caucuses at a junior high school that happens to be practically across the street from where I live (this is also where I usually vote in regular elections). There were about 15 precincts there and 5 to 10 people from each precinct. Most of the people there had never been to a caucus before.

There were five people in my precinct and we were all relatively young while many of the other precincts had a lot of older voters. Our precinct was assigned five delegates so each of us gets to be a delegate for the candidate of our choice. Our precinct had two for Kucinich (me and another person), two for Kerry and one for Dean. Overall for the area, the largest number of delegates was for Kerry, with Dean in second place. There were a few other delegates for Kucinich elected from other precincts and similar numbers for Clark and Edwards. There were also a couple of "uncommitted" delegates

What happens next is that all the delegates from this and the other areas in the legislative district will attend the legislative district caucuses, which are on May 1 (yeah, three months from now). At this time, we vote for the candidates we were pledged to. Or, if those candidates have dropped out (like if Dean drops out after Wisconsin) then the delegates can vote for the remaining candidate of their choice.

The same rules apply at the legislative district caucus as as the precinct caucus. Thus, a candidate needs to have at least 15% of the delegates to advance. If my area was typical, Kerry and Dean will advance and the other groups probably not. I and the delegates for Clark, Edwards, and uncommitted can join one of these groups or see if we form a viable group together either as uncommitted or for one of our candidates. My plan is the same as I mentioned before, which means I'll try to advance as uncommitted. If Dean drops out, then there will be a whole lot of delegates who have to vote for someone else and that could make a significant difference in the results.

As a precinct delegate, I also get to attend the county convention on May 8. From my understanding, this will primarily be about local party affairs and not involve voting on the candidates again.

Each legislative district caucus sends on a certain number of delegates to the congressional district caucuses, allocated among the candidates who advance. The same process applies again and it's only those candidates who are viable at the congressional district level who will get delegates to the national convention. The congressional district caucuses are on May 29 so it's not until then that we'll know which candidates actually get national delegates.

I arrived early at the caucus site and set out some materials on Kucinich. Later I had a chance to address the entire group and give a brief speech in favor of Kucinich. I read out the ten key points of his platform. I'm not the world's greatest public speaker but it went OK and a number of people approached me afterwards to tell me I did a good job, just because they're nice people.

I also served as the chair of my caucus since there was no chair already selected by the party. This meant that I got to guide the process along although the five of us really figured it out together as we went along. Fortunately, we had a very simple delegate allocation since all candidates were viable and the number of delegates was the same as the number of attendees. Some of the other precincts had to do more math (mathematical tables were provided so people could just look up what the numbers are).

After all the precincts had voted for presidential candidates and selected delegates, the group as a whole voted on resolutions. The Kucinich campaign provided ten resolutions based on Kucinich's platform, so I submitted those. All of them passed, and only one was slightly amended. Most of them passed overwhelmingly with few or no dissenting votes.

I had a great time and I'm glad I went even aside from the opportunity to vote for Kucinich. It was really kind of fun and I met some very nice people. Al-hamdulillah.