Been a true Blue in a Red state for quite some time...so it made me proud to see, not the 12 people that showed up for the 2004 caucus, not the 8 people that showed up for the 2000 caucus, and not the 3 people that showed up for the 1996 caucus. There were over 400 people in attendance in precinct 360. End result, +/-57% Obama, +/-42% Clinton...More after the flip.
When I arrived at the precinct, I was greeted by many multicultural (white, black, asian, hispanic and Indian Americans)...made me proud to be 1) American; 2) Democrat and 3) an Obama supporter. The relatively small caucus from the Clinton campaign were holding a sign, and apparently directing supporters into the caucus area well before 6:30...I'm guessing the mass # of them voted on the day of the caucus, but when I walked up to the school, there were no Clinton supporters really visible.
So fortunately the school was a big one...we were in the cafeteria (I think), and it was standing room only. As this was a heavy early voting precinct, pretty much everyone had already voted. When I walked in, we sat next to my next door neighbors, who saw us as they went in to vote and saved my wife and I a chair. It was nice to have a friendly face to talk to for the next three hours.
I was immediately a celebrity, since I've been to this rodeo before, and was even a state Delegate for Clinton in 1996. So suddenly I became everyone's guide through the process that was sitting near me. So I spent the first hour just describing the process to the random folks sitting near me, answering a ton of questions. I was no precinct chair for Obama, but looking back on it, I should have been. Some of this disaster was due to the blind leading the blind.
As 7:30p approached, people started to get antsy...the amount of time it was taking to get information from the precinct election judge was really long, there were no explanations why. I have my theories that this was some Clinton dirty tricks, trying to get casual voters (not hardcore Democratic insiders and activists) to take off, and there was even one angry guy insinuating this to the crowd, but the precinct chair seemed to be doing his best and everyone kinda calmed down.
As the time ticked to 8:30p, and signins hadn't started yet, the crowd started to thin out and people started to get really annoyed. Most had anticipated this being an hour or so at the max, bing bang boom. But alas, you had to be in for the long haul.
We started sign in, which was pretty well orchestrated, about 9p or so...the chair decided to have one Clinton and one Obama supporter each to check the voter card and the id and concur before letting a person sign the sign in sheet. Those without ID/voter reg, went to the big line outside...and they let those with children and those with shifts to sign in first, but the sign in, once started, maybe lasted 15-20 minutes...so by 9:30p, the wait for the tally began.
By the time delegates were selected, Obama barely had enough people there to be full delegates, and we were 20 people shy of having alternates. The process clearly thinned out a lot of Obama supporters. Clinton supporters, all but maybe two or three delegates white, and all delegates I believe being female, had enough for their 21 delegates, but they didn't have enough alternates either.
So, I was a delegate, my wife (who had to leave at 10p) was post-humously nominated and voted as an alternate, and I put my two neighbors on the list too. I'll tell them tomorrow that even though they left about 9 after the sign in, they got selected as an alternate to the county convention.
After that vote, our precinct was clearly tired, and we voted to table all the resolutions rather than read them or approve them blankly, effectively meaning that the resolutions were denied by the precinct. No one had read them.
And then word came across that Ohio decided to continue to divide the party, and Texas was not a sure thing. So I did my part to end this race, unfortunately others decided that negative campaigning beats positive messages of hope, and fear of 3am phone calls is more important than working with world leaders to ensure that no call ever comes.
That's my $.02 from Austin Texas.