Yeah, so I volunteered to help with my caucus here in El Dorado, KS (Yes, the place Obama stopped by last week and it's pronounced El Duh-RAY-doh-Spanish for "The Dorado." We caucused in a driving sleet and without power!
To be fair, I'm an Obama supporter but the funny thing is, I was too busy helping with the caucus to be counted! (Do I win any bonus Karma points for that?) My fault completely but I felt it was a small sacrifice to make sure the caucus ran smoothly...sort of. The night started out fine, I got there a little early to set up tables, get pollbooks set up and to do pretty much everything else. To give you an idea of the turnout for the Kansas Democratic Caucuses in our district in 2004...75 PEOPLE, this year 689 proud Democrats covered in snow, sleet and everything else that sucks about Kansas weather trudged into the El Dorado Civic Center. Everyone crammed into a space that was only meant to hold about 400 people. It was exciting to see both sides shouting slogans, chants, etc, it made me proud to be a Democrat. Now we started the count and low and behold, the damn power goes out! Audible groan from the crowd Classic line of "Stay Calm, we're going to finish this." Just when you think it was going to be awful, the power comes back on! Oh thank goodness! Audible cheers of joy However this moment was definitely fleeting because we were plunged into darkness within a few minutes. We finished the first count and darn our luck, the fire department shows up! Well Damn, we're over capacity. He doesn't clear us out but he makes us clear the exits and lets us continue on our way. However, some people wanted to have nothing more to do with this and so large sections of people left. Well once you have the initial count, those percentages and other crap have to stay the same (Not much help from the state party with my frantic phone calls). This led to an uproar among both camps claiming, hold on this requires a list: Bush-Rove tactics, disenfranchisement of 2000 Election scale, and lots of other profanities. I was threatened with a lawsuit 3 times (Damn, threaten the 22 year old who's trying to help you, damn jackasses..that was in my head, but my demeanor was cool, calm and collected) We had a shouting match almost come to blows down near the podium but cooler heads prevailed. Now me being a first-time caucus-goer (although sans the voting) and caucus volunteer, I hope caucuses go the route of the dodo bird/burn in unholy hellfire and brimstone. We eventually got everyone cooled down and continued and elected 5 delegates for Obama and 3 delegates for Clinton to the District Convention in Wichita. Thank you Kansas Legislature for being cheap-ass bastards and not providing the $2 million for a primary (Republican Secretary of State wanted one too). So next time you hear or ask What's the Matter with Kansas? I hope you realize we caucused in snow ranging from 4-10 inches across the state and in my little part of the state, in SNOW, SLEET AND THE DARK!
Updated I just received our local paper, the El Dorado Times and read through their account. The columnist actually did a relatively good job of not really blaming anyone. As caucus workers we were swamped, can't lie. The fire department guy was an asshole and that came across in the article that it seemed like he was disenfranchising voters and the fire department didn't have any official comment. I understand that he was doing that in the name of safety but after we had lost a lot of our caucus-goers and went below capacity, he was still barking orders. Some of the remaining crowd began yelling at him that we aren't at capacity anymore and told him to leave. I laughed, he gave me a death stare for agreeing but I just shrugged because the crowd was right. We signed up a lot of new Democrats (First-timers, Independents, and a couple dozen Republicans-I'll post numbers later if I can get them)! I understand the caucus is a party-building excercise (and it was!) but us Kansans enjoy our voting locations and booths. Some caucus-goers in Western Kansas had to cross two counties and an hour long drive (not mentioning the blizzard) to get to a caucus site. All in all, even with the hiccups, Democrats in Kansas win.