I'm Dante Atkins. I'm a known Obama supporter. And I've been in Las Vegas for the past 3 days canvassing neighborhoods for Barack Obama after coming out from Los Angeles, where I'm a precinct captain. For Caucus Day, my election assignment was Precinct 5204 in Clark County.
My organizer told me to prepare for a small precinct that would likely go for Hillary. That's exactly what I got--but until you actually attend a caucus, much less try to keep one fair and organized, you don't know how stressful it is for the volunteers and the voters.
The full story below the fold, including my own brush with attempted fraud in a neighboring precinct.
To begin with, my Precinct--as well as several others--took place at a middle school. There were no signs at the entrance telling people how to get to their individual precincts--we had to find out for ourselves as volunteers, and then make signs directing the voters to their appropriate precincts.
I got to my caucus room at 10:30 and the Hillary people were already there in force. They got out there very early--I talked to some of them, and I heard from some that they were there as early as 6am.
The precinct chair was an obama supporter, and the registrants were Hillary supporters. I introduced myself to the precinct captain for the Hillary campaign and established a good rapport so we could all agree on counts and results.
Based on other reports I've read, our individual precinct was run pretty cleanly. A lot of my time was spent talking to members of groups whom I knew would be non-viable--namely, the Edwards supporters and the uncommitted caucus-goers. Nevertheless, I was still keeping a watchful eye on registration, and things seemed to be going very smoothly--nobody was turned away, and everyone was accepted smoothly, no matter whether they were on the list or not, and no matter which candidate they supported.
We had a total number of 54 caucus-goers initially, including 13 Obama supporters, 36 Clinton supporters (if I remember correctly) and 4 Edwards supporters. Two caucus-goers remained uncommitted. As per the rules--which require a 15% threshold to be viable--the Edwards group and the uncommitted group were disbanded, leaving them free to be "seduced" by the viable Obama and Clinton camps.
I have to admit that the Edwards people are really die-hard about their candidate, because when Edwards was declared non-viable, most of them just left. It's not that they didn't know any better--the caucus chair, the Clinton captain and I all explained to them that if they wanted to hear their voices counted, they could join whichever one of the viable groups they preferred. But...no go for all but two of them. One of the two who stayed chose to join the Hillary area, and the other chose not to participate in the second round, and just observe the process.
And this by way of note: Any Obama supporter who takes the vote of Edwards supporters for granted when/if he drops out is making a serious mistake. Before the Edwards supporters left, many of them made a point about how if they did choose to support another candidate, it would be Hillary. The Edwards supporters were actually the most conservative of all the caucusgoers, and--I kid you not--I had to respond to 4 people at the caucus who asked me if it was really true that Obama was a Muslim and was sworn in on the Qu'ran. Two of those were standing with Edwards. I don't know what all of that adds up to based on my miniscule data set, but facts are facts: Obama has a lot of work to do to get support from Edwards supporters, no matter how much Edwards says that he and Obama are ideologically aligned candidates for change.
At the end of the second tally, the final result was Clinton 37, Obama 14, out of a total number of 54 (not counting those who left).
Sounds like a massacre, but the delegate count was actually a lot closer than the total caucus count because of the way the caucus math works: Precinct 5204 got to award 6 state delegates. Clinton got 37 out of 54, which means in delegate math:
(37*6)/54 = 4.11 (rounds down to 4)
Obama got 14:
(14*6)/54 = 1.55 (rounds up to 2)
So despite all of it, Clinton got 4 state delegates from my assigned precinct, and Obama got 2.
That was my precinct--but it's not the end of the story.
I then went over to see how the other, larger precincts were doing--precincts that Obama were actually winning. I went into the school gymnasium, where three separate caucuses were being held in close proximity, including 5333 and 5029.
When I got there, things had aleady been counted in 5029 (with some confusion about the eventual Obama 7-Clinton 4 delegate count owing to difficult caucus math), but the real ruckuss was in 5333: there was a great deal of consternation among the Obama supporters (including runnerAAA, the Obama precinct captain in 5029), because a lot of the Hillary caucus-goers from 5029 were attempting to be counted again in 5333! For more on that, see RunnerAAA's diary about precinct 5333.
Getting that sorted out was difficult, but we got it done eventually, then headed back to headquarters. And then we started hearing report after report after report of coordinated voter suppression and fraud.
I'm on my way home tomorrow, but we feel good. We got more delegates, we're moving on to South Carolina, and I'm going to work my butt off back home to turn out the vote.
It has been a fun ride, and I'm looking forward to the next round.