As many of you know I am an Obama supporter and a first time caucus goer. Here is my experience...
We showed up at 10 AM and the Hillary camp was all set with signs and volunteers. It didn't take long for the Obama volunteers to neutralize Hillary's head start. For starters, we noticed that Hillary's supporters were breaking the rules by placing Hillary signs where they were not allowed and we asked them to take them down, which they did. We then noticed, that a car sporting Hillary signage, was double-parked, blocking people who needed access to handicapped parking. We told a woman who just had a hip replacement to park her car right beside the car.
The next controversial issue involved the voter cards disappearing into the Hillary camp, so that the Edwards and Obama people were left with no cards. When we asked them to give us back some cards, we then noticed that they had all been pre-marked for Hillary.
Another controversy arose, when a Hillary supporter became hostile with the Precinct Chair because she felt that things were not moving as fast as she would have liked -- the time was only 11:00 a.m. This, along with the voter card stunt, ended up hurting the Hillary camp because the precinct chair, a known Hillary supporter, was turned off by these tactics and decided to join the Obama camp.
Our volunteers assisted the chair with maintaining the peace. My husband and another Obama precinct volunteer assisted the Chair in registering voters and my husband also helped by speaking Spanish to those who had trouble speaking English. Obama would be proud of the way we represented him at our precinct. While I was outstide welcoming the caucusers, a Kucinich supporter, who was the precinct chair for the other precinct at the same location, said that Hillary's supporters, with their questionable tactics, were driving caucusers to Obama. After the chair had been blitzed by impatient and aggressive Hillary supporters, Obama supporters brought some calm to the chaotic proceedings by reminding everyone that we were all Democrats and that the sooner we stopped bickering, the sooner we could proceed with the count.
Because of the card stunt I described, Obama volunteers demanded a head count instead of a card count. We counted a total of 98 people, but ended up with 97 after one Edwards supporter left. The Hillary side was initially totaled at 48, but they later claimed they had 56. We discovered this was because they attempted to count 6 persons who had left the precinct before the head count by claiming they had voter cards for them, even though we had all agreed to do a head count, due to the voter card controversy. Obama had 41, and Edwards had 8. The Edwards camp was declared non viable. Obama and Hillary supporters were then given a chance to persuade Edwards supporters to join them. Edwards only female supporter joined the Hillary supporters when a woman convinced her that it was her duty as a woman to vote for another woman. The final tally was Obama 48 and Hillary 49, a tie. Out of 10 total delegates, 5 went to Obama, and 5 went to Hillary.
Our tie was hard fought, but thank goodness we had competent Obama volunteers, who fought for every delegate. Almost everyone were first time caucus goers. In the end, we all shook hands and were proud to have taken part of the process of nominating our candidate.