My first caucus

Sorry for the no show around here lately. For those of you still here with me thank you :)

Well today I thought I'd share with you my first caucus experience from yesterday. It was a big day yesterday around here, as usually by this time, we pretty much know who the candidate will be for each party, but obviously this year it's not the case. There was a buzz in the air everywhere as you can hear tidbits of conversation around people about this election. An elderly lady in front of me at the coffee shop where I stopped by beforehand to get some coffee was telling the barista how excited she was to be going.

I wasn't initially going to go to the caucus until I found out last week that the primary ballots were not going to count if one was voting Democrat (so why this state has a funky situation having both a primary and a caucus beats the hell out of me). So, I thought I better do the right thing and take a few hours out of my weekend and have my vote count.

I got there half an hour early and the parking lot to the elementary school was already almost full. There was a good crowd of about 60 people or so already in line. By the time 1:00 rolled around, the crowd grew to a good 200-250 people, and we're in unincorporated King county. It was really inspiring to see all of these people here showing up in record numbers all over. My friend text messaged me up in Seattle saying that the line was around the block at her caucus location just to sign in. They had so many people up there that they announced over the loudspeaker that after they've signed in and voted for their candidate that they could leave simply, because they could not accomodate any more people into the building. So if one wanted to be elected as a delegate and were still in line outside, you were out of luck.

My caucus location was a little disorganized, but I suppose they weren't used to having so many people show up. I know I wasn't the only person attending a caucus for the first time, so I expected them to give instructions on how it works. It was a good thing I had done a little prepping on my own online prior to the caucus so I had some idea.

My precinct had about 28 people show up. After all was said and done, the votes ended up distributed as 2 undecided, 5 for Clinton and 21 for Obama. People were starting to get worked up about how we should elect the delegates, so I thought it was time for me to leave. I didn't want to be a delegate and they had enough people interested, so I went home about 2:30.

So by this morning, we all know that Obama won Washington state. This is going to be a really close race. I'm not one into politics all that much, but I felt I had to attend the caucus and do my part to vote in a very important election year. I really flip-flopped on my candidate choice for quite some time during the past few weeks, but I did make my decision and there was no looking back after that.