I participated in the Washington State caucuses today.
And it was the last fucking straw.
Follow me over the jump for my rant.
GBCDP = Good Bye Cruel Democratic Party.
Why?
Because they suck. They've sucked since they took control of the House last January, and they sucked before that. Not in a "We're evil" kind of way, but in a "We're completely incompetent on every conceivable way" level.
And as of today, I've had it.
First off: I have never participated in anything as poorly organized as these caucuses. The state/county/local Democratic Party made no attempt whatsoever to inform the voters about where to go to caucus as far as I could tell. I myself spent a lot of time on the phone trying to find out where to go -- I couldn't find out online because the state party website kept crashing my computer every time I tried.
I finally found out where to go at 12:30 this afternoon. The caucuses started at 1 p.m.
My caucus was being held at Kamiak High School in Mukilteo, Washington. It's, oh, maybe 8 miles tops from my house, probably less. It turned out to be the caucus place for at least two or three dozen different precincts as far as I could tell.
Kamiak High School is located on a two-lane road in a highly overdeveloped residential area. There's one road that will take you there, and only one. One two-lane, mostly-residential road. The traffic was backed up solidly from about a half mile from my house all the way to Kamiak. It took me an hour and ten minutes to get there. (It took me ten minutes to make the reverse trip).
I got there, finally, at about 2 p.m. It took me another ten minutes to find the specific room where my precinct (along with a metric buttload of other precincts) was caucusing. I ended up in a seriously overheated gymnasium, where I then had to spend anther ten minutes searching for my precinct. Everybody had signs but the genius who was acting as precinct captain was using the sign as a writing surface and therefore wasn't holding it up so people could actually see it.
I finally found them, however. I walked up, and I'll admit that by that time I was already seriously pissed off and I'm sure it showed on my face. The precinct captain greeted me and asked me who I was there to vote for. "John Edwards", I replied. "Oh, we're not going to send any delegates to the convention for Edwards", she said. "Who is your second choice?"
"I don't have a second choice," I said. "I came here to vote for John Edwards."
"But...."
"I don't have a second choice. I came here to vote for John Edwards."
"Okay."
So I completed the form and wrote in Edwards' name. She then asked me if I wanted to stick around. "No," I said. "I'm done here."
:::
Washington State has vote-by-mail elections. You cannot find a better way to vote anywhere in the US. But is that good enough? No. My tax dollars went to print and mail God-knows-how-many ballots which were accompanied by a letter from the Secretary of State saying that my Presidential primary vote, as a Democrat, would not count. I had to show up at the caucus for my vote to count.
It's voter suppression by hubris and incompetence. I have to show up, and if I don't know where to go and can't find out because the state party headquarters won't answer their phones and can't keep their website working, then too bad for me. If I have a work or other commitment that prevents me from going, then too bad for me. This city is full of stores and restaurants that are open for business today. If I worked for one of them, most likely in a low-paying service job, and couldn't get the time off to go and caucus, then too bad for me. Sure, I can still vote by mail, but my vote won't count. I have to show up, and if that means sitting in traffic for over an hour to drive less than eight miles to the worst possible location the party could have chosen for my caucus, then I have to suck it up and do it, or it's too bad for me. And then I'm basically told that my trip was for nothing and my vote wouldn't count anyway, because I voted for John Edwards.
The actual Washington State primary is next Tuesday. I'm filling out my ballot and mailing it in, and then on next Wednesday I'm changing my voter registration to independent. I'm still a progressive, but I'm sick of being a Democrat.