Rally

My pics are up of my non-attendance at the Obama rally.

Caucusing

Today was a first for me, like many other people. I attended my first caucus. In past years, I was really leery of this weird process I’d only vaguely heard about. This year was different though. I wanted to try it out.

As the day approached, I got increasingly excited about it. I wanted to see how it really worked. I also knew that it would be phenomenal turnout compared to past years. A little over eager, I left my house a little early to walk down to the location. As I walked down the sidewalks, they began to fill up. All of us were walking with a common purpose. It was a pretty decent crowd by the time we got there. It was already getting pretty full. I was glad I remembered my precinct number so I was able to go straight to my table. I signed in and wrote my preference.

I then spent awhile looking around the circle, trying to stereotype the people around me to guess their preferences. Obviously this was easier for those with giant stickers on their chests. I also started to recognize some of my other neighbors from the street joining the group. I peaked in on the sign in sheets in front of me and noticed there were a lot more Clinton votes than I’d expected.

The building was extremely crowded. It became SRO eventually. They announced that we were at 2.5 times the fire code capacity of the room. This also made it difficult to hear what was going on in our individual precinct. Everyone had to yell. Despite those problems, it was actually very well organized. They tallied the votes based on the sign-in sheets and announced the preliminary delegate totals. Our 9 delegates would be 7 Obama and 2 Clinton. We also had one uncommitted voter and one Kucinich voter who asked people to sway her. Quite a few people got up to give impassioned speeches, primarily for Obama. A few people did change their votes. At least one had planned to do that originally, so that they could say that in their speech. The vote changes didn’t alter the delegate totals.

I stayed to the very end. We ‘elected’ the delegates. (We had exactly that many volunteer.) Then, we ‘elected’ the alternates. I volunteered, so I was in. So, I’m an alternate delegate. They suggested that even the alternates go to the next convention, just in case. So, apparently I’ll get to see the next part of the process as well.

So far, based on the precincts I’ve heard from, the total is 17 Obama, 5 Clinton.

Updated: 38 Obama, 11 Clinton, 1 Uncommitted.

political compass

I find it interesting, even though the questions are poorly worded.

Me?

Your political compass
Economic Left/Right: -2.88
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -5.44

Which puts me a bit east northeast of the Dalai Lama

I wish the questions were better, especially at the beginning.

If you want to find out where you lie, here’s the test.