Its true. I watched it happen. And in a way, made it happen. Well, not really.
Okay bottom line is that today in Jefferson county in Colorado we had our county convention and assembly. And because there were too many of us (delegates and alternates) they couldn't handle it and just dismissed all of the alternates rather than take the time to seat them properly. How many alternates were they going to seat? I don't know, but at least 240 of us .. roughly I'd say a third of the alternates? But don't quote me on that one.
I am very angry and very upset. I'll go into details below the flip.
So like I said above, today was the Jefferson County assembly and convention in Colorado. On caucus night back on super dooper amazingly massive tsunami Tuesday we all went to our respective places here in CO. At our caucus, we broke something like 23-17 for Obama. We picked 6 delegates for him, and 4 for Hillary and an equal number of alternates. These were all volunteers. I signed up to be an alternate, not knowing if there was anything else major to attend to that day.
About a week ago I, and all of the others got stuff in the mail with a fairly rough idea of the agenda. Be at the Colorado School of Mines at 8 am. Also if you want to be a state or congressional district delegate, then sign up by March 13 at 5 pm. Okay, great .. got that, and did that. But then they extended the deadline till Friday at 5 and pushed registration for the convention and assembly earlier, to 7:30. Okay fine. I understand they expect a lot of us. Nothing was going to start till 9 anyways.
So I got to the school, registered and sat in the alternate convention hall from 8 am till about 2 pm. Why? They had to see how many alternates they were going to need, and that wasn't going to be known until 10, or maybe 10:30. So we had some lite entertainment by Paula N. (sorry, I forgot her last name, but she looked, acted and sounded like Ellen Degenerous, so that kept people happy I think). She gave us all a pop quiz on local legislative issues. And then we got to hear from some supporters for various races .. mostly local.
We finally got word around 11:00 that it was going to be AT LEAST another hour before they know about which alternates to take. And that the convention hall with the delegates was very, very packed. Not enough room to sit! So it didn't seem like they were going to take many. The guy (forgot his name too!) said maybe 100. There was a moan. And I saw several people just get up and leave. I wasn't because I knew there was still a chance.
Many people took this time to grab a bite to eat .. making sure they were back by 12:15. We heard from a few more supporters/candidates before getting told it will be another hour still. At this point, the state senate assemblies was supposed to start .. but we were told they wouldn't until the alternates were seated.
Finally around 1:30 the guy running the fiasco .. er, show .. comes in and says they will take at least 30 alternates from each house district .. districts 22 through 29 and they were going to pick the first 30 that signed in that morning. This was accepted at first. Then someone said that that couldn't be done. The idea being if many supporters for candidate .. lets just call her candidate C signed in early then she would have more supporters than she won on caucus night. Same goes the other way around for candidate O. But the guy running she show said if we took to the time to know how many delegates for each candidate were needed, we'd be there till Monday .. or Tuesday. Several loud people .. okay one guy yelled to just count the 30 out. As this was going on, people in the room were getting upset because that wasn't right. Then all of a sudden, it was decided that no alternates would be seated .. oh and the house assemblies are going on right now. But that it doesn't really mater to you because you're not seated. Meanwhile, this goes against everything Paula had been telling us .. and I could tell she was upset. When she got the microphone she said even as alternates we should go to the house assembly and if we were running to be a delegate for the state and congressional conventions to tell the delegates there that we've been waiting more than 5 hours to be seated and they should vote for us. At one point the guy tried to get the microphone back from her, and she blocked him. She was really amazing.
Anyhow, because alternates were needed, and they didn't want to take the time to seat us properly, the final delegate count from Jefferson county is going to be different from caucus night .. this disenfranchising those who voted here.
I'm very upset and a little more than pissed. I'm also very worried .. they knew the turn-out would be large .. why couldn't they handle it? I fear in the end, the candidate that won here on caucus night (which was Obama) won't have such a large victory because of this. I hope it just won't be significant.
I do want to thank those who in Jeff Co who did help to make things work, I know that was most everyone there .. especially "M.C." Paula.