This is what democracy looks like--in TEXAS.

I'm sitting in the Austin Bergstrom airport using the (expensive, though fast) wifi as I await my boarding, wich should take place in 70 minutes as of this typing.  I arrived in Austin to volunteer with the Obama campaign Saturday afternoon.

I spent some time in Austin during my tour of the country for Crashing the States, and got a good vibe from Austin.  I like it even better now.

Follow below the fold for a brief narrative that documents my not only my campaign activities, but touches on the Democratic resurgence in Texas--as well as the logistical nightmares that accompany it!

More below.

After days of canvassing and phonebanking, which included their own interesting experiences--see photos at the end of the diary--I was put to work on election day doing election-day turnout for the primary and caucus supervision in the evening for Precinct 136 in Travis County.  Precinct 136 was entitled to award 90 delegates to the County Convention, making it the third-largest precinct in the County--and definitely one of the top ten in the state.

I arrived at the polling place at the opening of the polls at 7am to do visibility and remind Obama supporters to caucus later that day--it was approximately 30 degrees outside, though sunny and clear.  Upon my arrival, there was already a line waiting at the polling place:

At 11:00, I headed over to one of Austin's numerous independent coffee shops--with outlets and free wireless, mind you--to manage the flushing operation.  We had a very efficient process--kath25 and I spent the night before until 2am cleaning the lists of supporters of all other candidates, as well as those who had voted early, from the list so we could specifically target supporters who had not yet voted.  We then assigned volunteers to make phone calls and walk canvass packets in the precinct targeting those households, and then doing cold-knocking if they had the time, since our supporter ratio in the district was very high.  All in all, our flushing efforts netted dozens more votes and caucus sign-ins for Obama, and I heard something to the effect that the organization we put together might be looked at as a model for how to run precinct-by precinct organization in future elections.  I'm damn proud of that.

I headed back to the polling place at about 5pm, where the line was getting even longer, and there were even more people doing visibility outside the polling place.

By the time the polls closed at 7, there were 110 people still in line to vote.  All told, the precinct had a total number of 965 in-person voters on election day, adding to the over 1,000 voters who had already cast early ballots.

And now, for the caucus.

We knew ahead of time that there was going to be trouble.  In the 2004 caucus, this precinct had 35 people show up to caucus.  The party gave us a room that could seat 150 people (one of the biggest locations the party assigned in the county, actually), thinking that would be enough to handle what they knew would be a large increase in turnout.

They were wrong:  over 650 people showed up to caucus, which led to a logistical nightmare.  The caucus line was out the door and into the far end of the parking lot, even after the auditorium had been filled:

This required a good deal of scrambling, but the Obama supervisors and the Clinton supervisors worked together to create mutually agreeable solutions that ended up in the creation of three separate sets of registration tables: three each for Clinton, three each for Obama, in three separate locations to break up the line.  Each table was managed by one supporter with each campaign, as well as a supervisor from the opposing campaign at each table (a supervisor from the Obama campaign was present at each Clinton table, and I personally oversaw the Clinton sign-in for the table with the largest number of registrations).

The main problem was that the caucus could only start once every voter had voted, and since there were 110 people in line to vote at the closing of the polls, the caucus registration could only start at 8:00.

The line was enormous at first, but eventually thinned down.  Since registration was being done by candidate, Clinton's line ran out much quicker.  Here is the scene at the tail end of registration for Clinton (occurring on the right side of the photo--Obama's line is on the left):

The registration signs were written on the back of Hillary signs that her supporters donated for the purpose--we're looking at the back of the signs in the previous photo.  To make thinggs easier, only those who were interested in being delegates were asked to stay for the actual convention part of things--namely, the part of the caucus where resolutions were heard and delegates were chosen.

Registration finally ended at 10:45 or so, and the counting got done at 11:30.  When all was said and done, the 90 delegates broke down 68 for Obama, 22 for Clinton.

While the counters were out counting, resolutions were read and voted upon.  Here's the reader reading them:

And with that, my flight is about to board, so I need to go.  I would have posted more photos from TX--maybe that will have to be done in a subsequent diary.  Enjoy!