RESULTS: How many people showed up to my Texas precinct caucus!

[crispini]

In reference to the contest I had a few days ago here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4754859#4802683

THE NUMBER ATTENDING: 397.

THE WINNER: JimGinPA guessed 400. So, even though he went over by 3, he was closest. Bravo! :applause:

THE STORY:

My precinct has about 3000 on the voter books. About 400 voted early. On election day, we had 642 voters. I worked the polls all day. Things went pretty well. I was happy so many had voted early. It helped. At our precinct, the Republicans were situated outside in the hall and we were in the auditorium. People were passing them all day long to come in and vote for us. I could have asked for the hallway but I figured if we got a line, we would be more comfortable in the auditorium where we would be inside, as opposed to the hallway where the line would wind up outside and who knows what the weather would be like. Also I thought it would be slightly entertaining to annoy the Republicans with all our foot traffic. :evilgrin:

We had some crossover. This was simply based on conversations with the Republican judge, who has been her precinct chair for years and knows everyone in the precinct, and told me that she saw a lot of people who she knows as R coming in to vote with us.

Voting went well. Also we did not have a line at 7 and so were able to close the polls on time. Our poll tape showed:

Clinton 322
Obama 316
Edwards 3
Richardson 1

Of course this does not count early voting, so I am still not sure how my precinct went.

At 7:15 I left the auditorium and went into the gym. Ya'll, it was full. Standing room only. It was entirely insane how full it was. There was overflow in the cafeteria. I opened the convention and there was a great cheer! I was so glad at this point I had gotten the PA. I was also very glad I got a script as I was so nervous and exhausted it was a great relief to just read from my script.

Sign in went reasonably well. We did run out of sign in sheets and had to give people paper. This annoyed one woman, who came up and yelled at me. I don't know why, exactly, except that it didn't "look" as official, but officials of the TDP and of DCDP told me it was ok. I had gotten extra copies during the day and even then it wasn't enough. We had eight sign in tables, a Clinton supporter and an Obama supporter at each table. The sign in took about 45 minutes, which I think is amazing. I think everyone got a chance to sign in, as far as I can tell. After the sign in, people left in droves. Thankfully. I think there were about 50 to 80 folks who wanted to be delegates and alternates left.

We did the math as a group. There had been an Obama person from their delegation who they had designated to do the math on their behalf. The Clinton people had not done this, but someone stepped forward to follow along. I am so glad we have calculators on cellphones. We probably had five people in the crowd doing the math. We did it on a big flip chart and I read the math rules and we followed along. The Clinton people were getting annoyed at the Obama math guy because he was being kind of loud but I made sure that I saw that there were Clinton supporters doing the math as well.

It was roughly 60-40 Obama-Clinton. We wound up with 22 Obama delegates and 15 Clinton delegates from our precinct.

Delegate selection took awhile, but neither caucus had to hold a formal vote, thank goodness. Now, bear in mind that I was also the election judge for this precinct, so I kept popping in and out to check on my clerks. Bless them, neither had buttoned up a polling place on their own and we made a hash of it. Forms in the wrong envelopes and when I finally did get my clerk out of the door with the results he accidentally left both supply boxes behind. Nevertheless he got downtown with the card from the counter, and the ballots, and all of the forms, just not all in the right places, and we hopelessly screwed up one form, but the results got downtown around 9, which was pretty damn good, all things considered.

We have a rather messy looking list of the delegations, but I had asked for elections of secretaries from both delegations, and they're meeting at my house today to sort out the actual paperwork and do a nice proper delegation list. After that, resolutions. We did do about four, but when the discussion about one particular resolution threatened to go off into the weeds I told them to call the Senate District chair and see if they could get on the platform committee for the SD and they could go whole-hog for resolutions there if they wanted. I think we tossed that one out anyway. Somewhere along in there I gave the Senate District chair's phone number to the remaining group, which was like 50 people. I hope they don't ALL call her tomorrow. LOL.

And then it was over. All in all, I think it went pretty well. No blood. Not a lot of yelling. A few people were pissed, but I think there were only 4 or 5 of them, at least that I know of, so less than 2%. And then I was off to phone in the results. The TDP phone system was awful -- you'd enter something and then there would be this loooooooooooooong silence. Like 45 seconds. I hope nobody hung up. I just patiently waited for the system to churn through what it needed to do and I got my results in. And then I went to a party and had several drinks.

Sorry no pictures. I was a little too pressed for time. If someone else took pictures I'll find them and post. And somebody blogged my precinct, haha, so here's another view:

http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2008/03/a_view_from_precinct_2228_some.php

And next I think I'm going to eat breakfast and then I might very well go back to bed. :hi: