I went to the Travis County Precinct 136 Democratic precinct convention (the REAL name for the media-misnamed “caucuses”) last night, so I could sign in and get my vote counted for the Other Third of the precinct’s delegates that will be awarded. It was a godsbedamned madhouse.
Public service announcements were plastered all over the media for DAAAYS: “Show up promptly at seven so you can sign in! It’s important that you Be On Time, or Evil Things will happen to your pet bandicoot!” Yeahright.
Literally hundreds of Democratic voters came back to sign in and be counted—as a comparison, the 2004 precinct convention had 32 people attend, and that was a record number. For a mercy, once you’ve signed in, you don’t have to stay for your vote to count. You can sign in and go home, which was exactly what I intended to do. I knew the ones who would stay for the whole thing would mostly be the hard-core politicos and the political junkies. (The last time I went to one of these corroborrees, I ended up as a delegate to the county convention, pledged to Gary Hart. There were maybe thirty people showed up that time too.)
At 7:00 sharp, when I got there (precinct conventions are usually held at the precinct’s polling place—in this case, an elementary school), there was a seventy-person-long line of waiting voters, out the door and down the block to the faculty parking. There was also a great cloud of people headed in through a different door, being herded along by a bunch of sheepdogs candidate-campaign workers. The long line of waiting voters meant the precinct convention was NOT going to begin soon, because under the Texas Election Code, the convention cannot begin until the VERY LAST voter has finished voting—and on the evidence, that wasn’t happening anytime soon. I struggled into the school auditorium, where the convention was ostensibly going to be held, and realized (1) there was NO way all those people were going to fit in (and not everybody had arrived, by a long shot), (2) I was in a badly ventilated room with (3) a whole bunch of people who had been exposed to gods-knew-what diseases and might be contagious all unaware, and (4) there was nowhere to sit but uncomfortable auditorium seats. I decided “the hell with THIS noise,” and went back out into the hall, where it was much less noisy, less crowded, and cooler.
I stood around with some others who either hadn’t found seats or had also realized it was 20° cooler in the hallway, and regaled the woman next to me with tales of the weirdness that is the Texas primary electoral process. She was a recent come-here from Virginia, and the Texas Two-Step was blowing her mind pretty seriously. I was entertained by the spectacle, which amply fulfilled the prediction of a guy I know who works in the Texas Secretary of State’s Elections division: “Those poor precinct workers aren’t gonna know what hit ’em.”
The chairman pro tem. was in low orbit around the building, trying to work out how to deal with the burgeoning line waiting to get in for the convention, which was growing faster than kudzu. It extended out the door, down the sidewalk, around the slowly-decreasing line of voters, down ANOTHER sidewalk past the faculty parking, down ANOTHER whole block and around the corner. The chairman was muttering about there being a thousand people present for the convention, which I think was overstating the case, but not by much. Certainly there were three or four hundred in the auditiorium, another hundred in the hallway, and several hundred in the line-out-the-door.
Some dithering and back-and-forthing happened between the precinct workers about where the registration tables were to be set up (middle of the hall? one end of the hall? both ends of the hall?), while people talked and visited. I ran into GreenGalInBlack, so we talked a while, standing around and waiting for something to happen.
About 8:15, the chairman pro tem. announced the last voter had finished and they could start to register people for the convention. This drew a cheer from the crowd. He stood at the end of the hall opposite me, using a bullhorn set to “inaudible,” which was a poor choice since he doesn’t have a naturally projecting voice. I guess we were on the Group W bench, because “we didn’t understand a thing that he said.” Eventually he did come down to our end of the hall and ask if we’d heard his instructions, and upon getting a resounding “NO!” said it all over again. The burden of it was that Obama supporters were to line up on one side of the hall, Clinton supporters on the other, please-have-your-ID-and-voter-registration-card-or-proof-of-voting-certificate-ready, and once-you’re-done-please-go-out-to-the-faculty-parking-lot-and-wait-there. THAT, as it turned out, was the only place big enough to hold everyone! After some more shuffling around (some bright soul finally realized they needed to have tables at BOTH ends of the hall, not just one, so more were set up at last), the lines formed up and sign-in began.
As a Clinton supporter, I was in the short line. Precinct 136 went for Obama 72-27, with a few lonesome Richardson and Edwards protest votes to make up the difference. Being in the short line, I was registered and done within fifteen minutes, while the Obama supporters waited . . . and waited . . . and waited . . . . I walked back and visited some more with GreenGalInBlack, until she got up to the table to register. I left her to it then, but later met with her and some other guys at the new Flying Saucer, a beer bar that’s just opened in the Triangle. (Verdict on it: good beer list, didn’t try the food, waythehell too loud if you sit inside, but they do have outdoor patio seating.)
I haven’t yet heard how late the convention ran, nor exactly how many people signed in. I have a feeling the answer to the former is “one or two in the morning,” and I have no idea about the other. Maybe we’ll all find out once the chairman re-surfaces in a day or two.
