Are ya voting? What do you think will happen? Who's your favorite? Excited, nervous, apathetic?

I'm caucusing tomorrow. It's the first caucus Colorado has ever had. From what I understand, you stand up, sit down, enter the room, leave the room, wear a hat, toot a horn, or something equally puzzling depending on who you're voting for. At least, that's how they did it in Iowa when my sister went to her caucus. I will report, assuming I survive.

I'm still officially undecided, and may remain that way if there is a benefit to having wild-card voters in the pool. More important to me at this point than presidential is my state senator race. We have two good candidates and I have to pick one. As far as the other races, I'll have to see if I can learn something.

Yes, We Can! - Si, Se Puede!

The "Yes We Can" song is a great song. Play it and cry. Here's a link to the song & video, featuring a star cast, by Will.i.am of The Black Eyed Peas. Inspired by Barack Obama's 'Yes We Can' speech.

http://www.yeswecansong.com

http://www.barackobama.com/

http://factcheck.barackobama.com/

Quoted from harihead

I'm caucusing tomorrow.

What's the difference between a Caucus and a Primary? We just have elections!

Don't worry, I only learned this myself. If you live in a poor state or one with a sparse population, it's too expensive to hold a primary, where people simply go and vote. So instead, you hold a lot of these little meetings and decide as a group. I'll know more tonight after I go to one.

Caucus: A meeting of the local members of a political party especially to select delegates to a convention or register preferences for candidates running for office.

There's two things I will never understand.
1. The rules to cricket
2. The American election system

You have to think horses.

See, back when George Washington was king (until he voted himself out and installed himself as president), we had lots of guys (remember, no girls, no slaves, but yes, friendly Indians were sometimes okay) in remote places. So to vote, you'd get together in your town, pick who you liked, and put a certain number of representatives on a horse. They would ride and ride and ride and ride and weeks or months later arrive at the assembly, and then vote as they were bid to by the representatives of their town/city/state/territory whatever.

We're still doing that today.

So we get together in these groups, but your individual vote doesn't really count because our electoral college still pretends the only votes that count are the guys on horses who show up to speak for you. We may not have Europe's fine tradition of history going back thousands of years, by gum, but we do the best we can! We developed a system 200 years ago and we're sticking with it! Pretend horses for President! That is our rallying cry.


In other news, I was reading Barack Obama's stance on separation of church and state. It's a wonderfully written, and I thought moving account, but this passage scared me silly:

"And if we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution."


substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution...

To you all: This is what you're dealing with, here. Just thought I'd share that.

Anyway, the rest of his speech is here, if you're interested. Cheers!

http://www.barackobama.com/2006/06/28/call_to_renewal_keynote_address.php

Quoted from harihead

So to vote, you'd get together in your town, pick who you liked, and put a certain number of representatives on a horse.

That's exactly what I mean. It doesn't make sense, does it?

Quoted from Bobber

There's two things I will never understand.
1. The rules to cricket
2. The American election system

I love you. Please have my babies.

I am not sure if Iowa had Super Tuesday or whatever but either way I'm voting seeing as I neither get or care about politics.  

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.

Quoted from BlueMeanie

I love you. Please have my babies.

Thanks. I was thinking of dropping mine at your place!  

@ Marie:
I think the difference is that cricket is more relaxing to watch.

So it's a block vote then?

I'm not sure it's that simple. Here's what my web site tells me:

Delegate Explainer
- Each national party apportions a specific number of delegate votes to the various states and territories, based on state population and complex calculations of party strength and support in recent elections.

- The rules governing delegate allocation to candidates vary across parties, from state to state and are dependent on whether delegates are pledged or unpledged.  Click here for more information on the delegate allocation method:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22477414/ (My note: lots of stuff here about the process)

- Candidates need a simple majority, or half the national delegate total plus one, in order to win their party's nomination.

I'd rather watch cricket.

Quoted from Bobber

I'd rather watch cricket.

  

This is who I think of at the mention of "Super Tuesday," Bobber: