I drove my wife to yoga (she's Japanese and can't caucus) then took the kids to Stevenson middle school, the location of the caucus. Sign-up was slated to start at 6:30 with the presidential candidate polling due to start at 7:00. I arrived at 6:20, and the school parking lot was packed with a line of ten cars waiting, and the street parking was taken for a quarter mile in both directions.
So I drove up the hill, squeezed into a too-small spot everyone else had avoided, strapped the baby to my chest, and walked hand-in-hand with my 5 year old daughter to the school.
We arrived at 6:30 and the line was already a few hundred people long and winding its way out toward the street. We were in line for 5 minutes or so when someone came by and told us that the line was for new Democratic party registrations. If we were registered Democrats we could go straight in to the cafeteria and wait to caucus. When we got to the front, we found there was a catch: you needed to know your precinct number. Some people had received them in the mail, others had not, so the several-hundred person line was for precinct look-ups, too. Fortunately, one of the volunteers took pity on me (I think the baby helped here) and looked me up so I didn't have to exit the cafeteria and go outside to the back of the line.
I got to my table at about 6:40. All the seats were taken and people were milling about. It was packed. I signed in and waited. People were restless, but someone quieted everyone down and said that candidate selection wouldn't start until 7:00. Despite being overwhelmed (in a typical year, a presidential caucus is 5000 people, this year 20000 were estimated) the volunteers kept order and kept people slowly filing into their correct tables as well as signing up new Democrats.
At 7:00 sharp, presidential candidate preference polling began. Each precinct had a volunteer who looked at the attendance roll and passed out ballots when someone indicated they were actually there. There were so many people, that the volunteer was getting overwhelmed, so he "deputized" a nearby voter to collect the ballots and put them in the envelope. When my name was called I received my ballot, filled in my preference, and gave it to the person collecting them. It was 7:20.
It was dark out. It was an hour later and the line was even longer than when I had arrived. I explained to people that those who were registered Dems and knew their precinct number didn't have to wait, but one of the volunteers had been going up and down the line, and everyone knew already.
A few things struck me. I was impressed at how many people were signing up as Democrats just for the opportunity to participate in the caucus. A lot of people in the line were there to find out their precinct number, but a lot were also unregistered, or independents who wanted to caucus. It was really amazing. I was also amazed by the caucus volunteers. They did a fantastic job keeping the process moving and getting people where they needed to go to participate. When folks started to get a little restless, they were able to calm them down. Another thing was how happy everyone was. Excited people talked to each other even though they were complete strangers. A guy was walking up and down the line of waiting people passing out Oreos from a huge bucket. You could really sense that people were so upbeat and optimistic. And there were so many people. I've participated in elections and primaries at that same location and I've never seen the same numbers of people by an order of magnitude that I saw tonight. There were easily over a thousand people.
One last thing, I saw Obama stickers, Obama signs, and Obama flags, but not a single piece of advertising for Clinton. I'm sure when the ballots are counted we'll see why, but it was surprising not to see anyone supporting her.