Reply #21: Even Obama's people were only predicting 18,000 turnout

[KamaAina]

we had never had more than about 5,000 before.

Let me tell you, it was ugly. Just ugly. Dozens of us were milling around one tiny little table trying to find our precinct. No one even checked my name off a list of voters; all I did was brandish the Dem party form I'd downloaded from their site (during the few minutes yesterday that it wasn't crashed) and someone directed me to (one can only hope) the correct precinct table.

There we sat, in full view of several signs supporting one particular candidate (remember, this is a caucus, not an election, so it wasn't against the law, just unethical), for 25 minutes. Then came the announcement: Surprise! They didn't have enough ballots! The few they did have were quickly snapped up as though they were tickets on the last train out of Berlin. Twenty more minutes later (bearing in mind there's a Kinko's right down the street), another shipment arrived -- of different ballots! (the first batch had a space for congressional district; these did not).

No one made sure that somebody didn't "cock-a-roach" two or three ballots by sleight of hand, or for that matter, that they weren't all distributed to people wearing the "right" stickers. For that matter, the "ballot box" consisted of a manila envelope somebody was holding. Nothing actually happened, I don't think (seeing as how the victorious candidate's people ran out of stickers, right before they got to me), but the potential was certainly there.

And my caucus site was relatively mellow! The sites were based on state House districts. Mine, at a large middle school, served only one district. Another middle school across town, Kawananakoa, served three. It has been reported that voters there were reduced to simply writing their choice out on sheets of blank paper (Kinko's, you see, is a mile or so from there). Had my boss not left early for our upcoming D.C. trip, that's where she would have been -- with her mobility scooter and service dog. That could have gotten interesting...

Now you know how a state with about a 3-1 Dem registration edge came to have a repuke governor: organization, or more precisely, the lack thereof. On the bright side, we did register 10 or 15,000 new Dem voters in one night! :bounce: