Well, if that was what democracy looks like, democracy looks like too many people crowded into WAY too small a space, with lots of yelling and poor organization. That about sums it up, I s’pose.

PS: I am so totally rock hard caucus. I went to the Signal Path show at 2am, got home at 4:30am, and was at my precinct caucus by 10am. Some people like to talk the talk. Others of us like to actually walk it! (This statement is ridiculous because I’m really not very political, but since I went to caucus and you didn’t, I can get all righteous.)

As for the actual nitty-gritty, my precinct had 54 people present. There was room at the table for perhaps 15 of those people. Initial votes went something like this: Dean - 14, Kerry - 15, Kucinich - 8, Edwards - 6, Clark - 4, Uncommitted - 7. I voted for Edwards (on the electability/personality card) and was clumped with Clark and Uncommitted folks, since we didn’t meet our 15%. Edwards people tried to lure Clark folks, and Clark folks tried to lure Edwards people. (The worst was the Clark-supporting woman who said, “Clark is anti-war and pro-choice!” Er, Clark pro-choice? I’m totally out of the loop and even I know where Clark stands on abortion, lady.)

Things started getting a litle hairy at this point. I would guess that there were a dozen precincts meeting in the church basement where the caucus was held…a dozen precincts each with about 50 people. That makes for 500+ PEOPLE IN A CHURCH BASEMENT!

All those people shouting and talking meant that I couldn’t hear anyone. Kerry, Dean, and Kucinich people stood up to shout their points about why we should vote for their guy, and then we had our second round of voting, which was really poorly done. A woman shouted a citizen’s name out, and if that person was still there, they shouted out their vote. Then a harried, barely paying attention guy recorded it.

It was total chaos and disorder, and I’d been there for an hour and a half at that point and was sweating, claustrophobic, and irritated at the Dean supporter from another precinct who had walked over to to shout about Dean being electable, and then stormed off when he was told that the Dean people had already had their chance to talk.

So, I revoiced my vote for Edwards, and I left.

On the whole, I would say the biggest issue was just organizers being totally overwhelmed by turn-out. “Unusually heavy turn-out” was reported state-wide. The typical statewide turn-out is usually less than 20,000. This article quotes someone speculating that today’s caucues had more than was more than 100,000 attendees.