UPDATE: RonK Seattle informs me that I missed a change in WA's caucus procedures. See below...
And here you were thinking that Iowa's caucuses tomorrow night were going to be the first indicators of presidential preference in 2008.
Not so.
In tonight's special edition of the weekly Seattle DrinkingLiberally, we'll be holding our own caucus, a full day ahead of those Hawkeye State pikers.
And we'll be drinking good beer while we caucus.
You can read a tad more about the event here. Our precinct caucus will take place at Seattle DrinkingLiberally's usual venue, the friendly and neighborly Montlake Ale House, located at 2307 24th Ave E in (natch) Seattle's Montlake neighborhood.
As closely as possible, our caucus will be run just like the real Washington Democratic precinct caucuses that will take place on the afternoon of February 9. Which means that:
- Each participant will sign in and name his or her first round choice.
- The total voter-count
and the 15% threshold number will be determined. - The first round results will be announced, and candidate subgroups will congregate together.
- There will be an opportunity for revision and changing of candidate choices
, bearing in mind the 15% threshold. - The second and final results will be announced.
- The number of delegates awarded to each candidate will be determined.
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UPDATE:
In a comment below, RonK Seattle points out that this year's rules for the Washington caucuses have removed the 15% threshold at the precinct level. The relevant section on page 16 of the 2008 Washington Delegate Selection Plan is as follows (emphasis added):
Each presidential preference, which receives 15% or more of the votes cast at a meeting, (except at the precinct caucus level where no threshold is required) shall receive his or her share of the delegates allotted. If no presidential preference reaches the 15% threshold, the threshold shall be the highest percentage received by a presidential preference minus 10%. Alternates shall be allocated in the same proportion as delegates.
Removal of the 15% threshold makes it all the more important to predetermine how many delegates our theoretical caucus will be choosing. If we have eight, the minimum percentage for earning a delegate will be somewhere around 12.5%, but it would take around 20% if we're picking just five delegates. The precise percentage won't be known until we run the numbers, due to the procedures for dealing with fractional percentages.
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The number of "delegates" in our artificial precinct has not yet been determined. It'll probably be dependent to some degree on the number of voters we attract to tonight's event. I'd like to see us draw enough people to permit us to distribute, say, eight delegates among the candidates. That's a typical, perhaps a tad high, number of Democratic delegates for a Seattle precinct. My own precinct, for example, had only four delegates in 2004, but that's because it had been slightly redrawn and therefore earned delegates solely on its number of voters. This time around, our delegate-count is based on both the number of voters and the percentage of Democratic voters in the precinct ... as a 90%-Democratic precinct, we'll be electing nine delegates in February 2008.
Any and all Kossacks are invited to participate in our first-in-the-nation caucus tonight. The one exception to Washington caucus rules is that you don't have to reside in the precinct to participate. Simply showing up at the Montlake Ale House this evening will make you an eligible caucus voter!