Sorry I have no pictures, but I want to submit a concern of mine in the Alaskan Caucases. I went to the Carlson Center in Fairbanks where at least 4 districts participated.
The volunteers for the party were overwhelmed by the turnout for this nomination. Two lines strung for blocks waiting to get in. A lot of people were cold, but I never saw a single person peel off the lines. I wanted to but talked myself into staying.
It’s a closed caucus with same day voter registration, so a lot of delay was caused by a rather long form that needed to be filled out. They finally got smart and took the forms out to people in line and things went more smoothly thereafter. The Democratic Party had to shell out an additional $2,500 to add the entire space of the center in order to accommodate everyone. They were smart enough to send out donation envelopes to help pay for the additional space.
The caucus was scheduled to begin at 10:00 am and finish by 2:00. We finally got in at 11:30. Then we sat around for quite a while as organizers tried to organize us. We could hear another district’s wild cheers through a curtain they had used to cordon off the participants. Later, I heard one participat say she’d been waiting a long time for people in our district because her district had quickly voted for Bernie, and Hillary hadn’t got her 15%
Finally, they asked us to form into groups of 10, 5 and 2 so they could begin to count us. The space was so crowded on the Bernie side that I coulnt’ see anyone making a distinct group. I recognized many of the people in charge of the operation, and many of them were supporting Hillary. The first count was 470 for Bernie and 100 for Hillary. Then they had the undecideds move into a group (overwhelmingly Sanders) and a third party challenge that didn’t reach the 15% (promising a keg in the parking log). These people went overwhelmingly for Bernie. But we couldn’t hear what was going on, really. They had something akin to paper cups as megaphones. At one point, the group did the Occupy echo thing, which was good, but they stopped and no more info.
So it was time for a recount. in the first count, we had shouted out our individual number as the count went up and we were pointed to. In the second count, a person pointed at someone, said “your vote is counted” and clicked a mechanical counter.
There were a group of us, mostly older, sitting in the few chairs available who stood up and shouted “YOU DIDN’T COUNT US!” when they tried to present their final count, that was almost half the original amount for Bernie. The rest of the crowd joined in and they were forced to come around and click that device and say “you’ve been counted”. I’m not sure, because we couldn’t hear most of what anyone said at any time, but I heard “230”, interpreted it as a count for Bernie and erupted out of my seat, saying “YOU DIDN’T COUNT US!”
We never heard a final count. There were mutterings about 3 delgates for Clinton, 16 for Bernie, but no one ever really told us. They were all off into electing delegates after that. Someone shouted, “You can go now!”, which is all anyone wanted to hear. This was District 4, one of the last to get out of there and with a preponderance of caucus officials who HAD to show their preference, on the Hillary side, including our former borough mayor.
I’m fairly certain that, if we lived in a real democracy that was truly represented by Democrats, we would have come out with a larger win for Bernie. And please notice: the Democratic Party of Alaska has garnered a huge number of same day registrants, 99.9 % of which went to Bernie. I’m going to stick with my Democratic registration for a little while to see if they straighten up. In Alaska, they might do so, what with our ovewhelming numbers for Bernie.
In the long run, it would be more efficient to rescue the Democratic party from itself and take over, than it would be to start a new party. But public sentiment is rarely practical or efficient.
If they knew what was best for them, they’d reform RIGHT NOW!