Okay, so I went to this caucus. It turns out there were 4 precincts all meeting in this one big room, a cafeteria for a local school. It was amazingly noisy and lots of people frequently yelled "Shut up!!!" Some people had sheets of rules to follow, but most of us had no idea what we were doing.
It turns out each precinct gets to send out 5 horsemen (delegates). The horsemen are picked by percentage of votes. So we sent off 3 riders for Obama and 2 riders for Clinton for our 1 precinct. The total vote of all the precincts was Clinton 80 vs. Obama 70. But I have no idea how many horsemen actually rode for each candidate, and only they get to vote. We scummy citizens only got to vote to send off our horsemen.
Here is how a caucus works: You come in and sign your name. The sign-up sheets are a disaster, so you sign any piece of paper someone hands you. Then you sign another identical piece of paper, only they aren't identical. They are supposed to be different, yet they are the same. No one understands any of this (obviously the first rule of caucusing).
Then, the person with the loudest voice started reading some rules which we all voted to not listen to. Then they produced a checklist of what we're supposed to do, but no one knows what any of this means because we didn't read the rules. Then someone is elected Chairperson and Secretary. These people got the jobs because they were sitting at the end of the table and could not pass the buck any further. Of the two of us at the end of the table, Adam got to be Chairperson because he had the nicest suit. I got to be Secretary because someone handed me a piece of paper and a pen and told me to write neatly. Everyone enthusiastically voted us in, so they wouldn't have to be responsible.
Then we did a straw vote, to figure out how to divide up our 5 horsemen. We had Obama 26 and Clinton 15. Then we did speeches to try to convince the 2 undecided people, who never did get to vote because we sort of skipped that step. We never voted for who we supported for district representative either, although we had to pick a delegate to ride for that person. Only, that delegate is uncommitted. They explained it to me and I still don't understand why.
So we had to pick our 5 horsemen and 5 alternates for our candidates, which were done by some group of people near the end who kept nominating each other. These names were sort of thrown out and I wrote them down, with the Chairman frantically finding them on the list and reading them out to me. Then we were one alternate delegate short, so I put myself in through my special role as Secretary, because they said "No one wants to do it," but they never really asked that question of the entire precinct. I think that little group just ran out of people.
Then we skipped the next three steps because the lady reading the sheet of paper didn't think they were important. So then everyone left, suddenly in a group, without any actual voting done, which turned out to be a mistake, but it was too late now because most people had left, except for the people who were going through all these messed-up pages of notes. All of us who were left in the room got extra jobs because the group didn't vote on everything. So one lady appointed herself election judge, and another guy appointed himself state delegate, only he wasn't representing anybody (none of us understood how that worked), and I got voted assistant precinct coordinator because I was still there signing lots of pages as secretary and the precinct leader was dying of exhaustion, and I felt sorry for her.
And then we went home. So I have to ask: Is this more or less like cricket? Because I was there the entire time, and I still have no idea what happened.