…
So you’re all current on your voting address, right?
OK good. Now we can talk about other things.
WHAT IS ASSEMBLY?
Or, “Can’t I just vote a Primary Ballot? Like a normal person?”
Yes, you can vote a ballot like a normal person. You will receive a ballot at your VOTING address (not your MAILING address) sometime after June 4 when they will drop. And sure, that might be all you feel like doing. Unaffiliated voters who express a preference will receive a ballot for their preferred major Party; those expressing no preference will receive both a Dem and a GOP ballot, and will have the option to fill out and send back ONE of the two—not a mix of both (cannot WAIT to find out how many people will whiff on that one).
But… don’t you want to do more.
Don’t you?
If your life is super busy and the evening of Tuesday March 6 is all you feel like contributing given your saturated Saturdays, then sure; I get it. But if you CAN take a Saturday or two and dedicate it to getting intimately involved in our State and local politics, I strongly urge you to do it, or at least consider it. The Saturdays in question will be March 17th, 24th, or 31st; some rural Counties may hold Assembly on a Friday night—the full date range is the 16th through the 31st. Exactly when your County will Assemble is up to them; please contact your County Party leadership after locating them here.
So at Caucus, y’all will have this meeting of neighborhood (precinct) Democrats, at which several key things will happen:
* Read rules, and elect two people to run the meeting—a Caucus Chair and a Caucus Secretary. The former will conduct Caucus according to the rules, and the latter will record results.
* Conduct polls to learn who supports which candidates. People can do as many straw polls on as many races as they like. However there is only one binding Preference Poll upon which delegate election is based.
* Elect delegates to Assembly! In almost all cases, this is based on proportional support for the candidates for Governor. The likeliest candidates to have support sufficient to elect delegates (must have a minimum 15% support among attendees: this is called viability) are Jared Polis, Cary Kennedy, and… well… Uncommitted. In smaller precincts, the viability threshold will be higher than 15%, but it cannot go lower. This is because that same viability level is maintained at the County and State/Congressional levels with many more people.
* VOLUNTEERISM — I can’t stress this enough. While there will be a general call for volunteers, the big ask is to become a Precinct Committee Person. This person is the local County Party neighborhood volunteer organizer. DON’T RUN AWAY IN FEAR AT THIS TIME. More on this later. Other opportunities will be Election Judge and Poll Watcher.
* Discuss Platform Resolutions if there are any in your County. Stay for this if you can! This is where you get to do the easiest most Internetty thing in the world: talk about your ideas and values with other Democrats in your neighborhood.
* Exchange phone numbers and emails. Ok, this isn’t required, but you should do it. Come prepared to make friends and build community connections.
STILL READING? Excellent! Let’s get in some weeds… weeds of POWER.
IF YOU WANT TO GO TO ASSEMBLY, GET ELECTED AS A DELEGATE
Your County Assembly needs you there. And you want to be there. Why? Because at County, the caucuses for your State House and State Senate Districts will happen. Your Districts will break out and have their own caucus (although these will be done via printed and signed ballots, credentials issued to you when you sign in). So if you really like someone in your State Lege District primary, this is how you give them far more support than voting only in June. Candidates who receive 30+% support make the June ballot. Candidates who receive 10-29% are ballot eligible but MUST have turned in sufficient petitions by March 20. Candidates who receive under 10% are denied ballot access (unless they did not declare for the caucus process in the first place).
Also happening at County: your County Commissioner, Clerk and Recorder, Treasurer, Sheriff, Assessor, Coroner, and all other County-wide elected offices go through the same process.
POTENTIALLY happening at County: if your Judicial District aligns with your County, it will Assemble, and administer any caucus it must for a contested primary situation. This could happen in Boulder, JD20, as DA Stan Garnett recently stepped aside, & there will be an appointment to that seat. Someone could certainly decide to run for that seat in a challenge to the appointed person.
If your House or Senate District is Multi-County, you cannot Assembly at your County level; there will be another date set up for that. House District 56 is one such example, combining Brighton with far southeast Aurora.
Following all this business, folks will get elected up to Congressional District Assembly and State Assembly. If you have any skin in those primaries, this is where you make an outsized impact. The big rural Congressional Districts usually caucus the night before State so that folks can travel on Friday, run their caucus, stay the night, and attend State early the next morning. Congressional District offices are more than the US House; they are also the State Board of Ed and the CU Regent offices. At State, the offices for which delegates will caucus are Governor, Attorney General, Secretary of State, Treasurer, and CU Regent At Large.
While this sounds like a massive inconvenience, a waste of time, an inaccessible archaic holdover, and loud, it is other things. It is meeting in person with elected officials, Party officers, and dedicated volunteers. You have tremendous community building networking potential here, if you so choose. You can amplify your voice more than you probably believed you could. You can get your feet in all kinds of doors. And then you can tell others. So, I hope you’ll consider doing it.
This brings me back to being a Precinct Committee Person. The volunteerism involved in doing this work can be whatever level of organizing you want it to be: you can do whatever you wish on your own schedule. You also get voting rights on your Central Committee and are encouraged to show up to those meetings and vote, but there really are not too many of those. Like a couple a year. What is far more useful and good is to invite your neighbors to your own meeting every so often, at a local establishment of your choice, to connect and network and share and help and build. Perhaps even rant about President Business during conversational lulls. Mostly, though, it’s the good stuff.
I don’t mean to make it sound easy. It won’t usually be. BUT you’ll be doing community-level organizing that is free to do, has a big support structure when utilized properly, and absolutely will not get done if no one does it. If your Precinct already has two PCPs, great! You don’t need to be one. But if they have one, or none, then… think about it. OK? Cool.
Because this is how we win. Long term, durable, strong and resilient victory is built in communal relationship. Absent that, we’ll get shattered apart by technotalitarian forces still in the womb of doom. If you watch Black Mirror, you know exactly what I mean. Cambridge Analytica’s electioneering for Trump worked in part by taking advantage of the level of isolation we often find ourselves in, alone with our social media feeds. Messages tailored to us as individuals worked on enough people to flip an election to a fascist demagogue. If We are in Community, will that strategy work as well? Fuck no. So let’s get to work killing that destructive strategy… and start by attending Caucus on March 6, and perhaps going on to Assemblies.
Colorado State Open Thread is brought to you by the letter C.
Colorado: Mondays, 7:00 PM Mountain
Michigan: Wednesdays, 6:00 PM Eastern
North Carolina: Sundays, 1:00 PM Eastern
Missouri: Wednesday Evenings
Kansas: Monday Evening
Thanks for reading!