At the caucus, you can nominate people who are not there to delegate spots.

[crispini]

I learned this last night at the state party training, just thought I would give everyone a heads up.

The reason to do this, of course, would be if you have 20 spots and only 15 people in your delegation show up. You need to fill out that delegation as much as you can in order to maximize your voting strength at your county/SD convention.

Chairs are not allowed to add people to the roster as delegates after the convention is closed. This has changed from previous years.

[WolverineDG]

1. Okay so

I can add names to the list as long as we are still sitting in the school cafeteria ;) but once it's all over, I can't add any names. Right?

Not that I have any names, but just want to be sure.

Will the State Party be providing aspirin or Tylenol?

dg

[crispini]

2. LOL. That's my understanding.

Although of course you have to vote on 'em before you close it down. ;)

We have 56 delegate spots (and 56 alternates) so I have a feeling this might come into play for us.

[WolverineDG]

3. I have no clue what's going to happen

our elections administrator was on the news explaining what our rep meant when he said "you can vote twice" at the clinton rally yesterday.

(pause whilst crispy sets her drink down) . . . . .

"What he meant was you vote twice--once on March 4 or early voting & once in November"

:rofl:

dg

[crispini]

4. Oh, lordy.

Doesn't he know about the caucus? :eyes:

[WolverineDG]

5. Apparently not

but I bet someone has set him straight now.

dg

[thevoiceofreason]

6. Here is my ongoing question

I have been told by several groups (including the Harris County Democratic Party workers) that when you arrive for the precinct convention, you can write down the names of people who voted democratic, support your candidate, but who cannot attend. Their names (allegedly) will count toward the vote total at the caucus for the candidate. However, I cannot find any law, rule or regulation that allows that. In fact, the closest law/rule I could find is the one that only allows "proxy" voting when otherwise allowed by the rules -- but I cannot find where this is allowed by the rules.

Thanks in advance.

[crispini]

7. Um. Well, I was at a training conducted by Ken Bailey.

Of the TDP. He was very clear that we could in fact nominate someone to be a delegate that was not there. He stated this several times. However, I am not so clear on whether or not that person who is not there would actually also be "signed in" for the precinct convention and thus count in the delegate allocation totals. I do not recall that the question was asked.

I would suggest you pick up the phone and call the state party. I agree with nominating a delegate who isn't there to fill a spot, but putting someone on the roster as present when they are not does not smell right to me.

Also, you might check the TDP website for a training near you. We have several next week. If the Harris County DP is wrong, I hope you'll correct them. That doesn't seem quite fair, to be honest. I could just sign in whoever the hell I want and say they're supporter of my candidate and who the hell would know? :shrug:

Edit: We have another training next Tuesday and I might go to that one too, just to make sure I know my stuff. If I go, I'll ask your question.

[sonias]

8. crispini, I'm pretty sure you're right

Filling out the delegation is something different than the vote to determine the strength of the voting block by preference.

So to sort of combine your answer and voiceofreason's answer/question.

#1) The first vote of the caucus is essentially signing in with a presidential preference at the precinct caucus. You must be present to vote. No, you can not mail in a proxy and you can not write in anyone's name who is not present. But people who have to leave relatively quickly are voting when they sign in with a preference.

Based on that voting strength the rest of the precinct caucus gets decided on that voting strength. That's why it is important to get your neighbors in your precincts to come out and vote. If even for the 15 minutes it takes to sign in. When you vote for a PCT chair and secretary, those present have the full strength of the voting block. So even if some people leave, you in essence have their proxy.

An example I gave earlier is this one:
Your PCT gets 12 delegates that can go to your county convention. This is pre-determined by the county party and based on your voting turnout in 2004 and 2006. All of those numbers are provided to the chair/person who picked up the PCT convention packet.

Let's say 36 people show up to your PCT convention that night. Let's say 24 of them sign in for Obama and 12 for Clinton. The Obama voting strength is 2/3 and Clinton's 1/3. The Obama campaign will get 2/3 of the 12 delegates or 8, and Clinton will get 1/3 or 4. These are the people that get selected to go to the county/senate conventions.

It doesn't matter if all of the initial signers are present to vote for those delegates. Let's say that only 15 people from the Obama camp are present to vote for the actual names of the people who want to move on as delegates. Well those 15 people choose their 8 delegates for Obama.

In other words both camps sort of conduct mini conventions within the PCT convention to elect the people, loyal to their candidate, to move on.

The big vote is in allocating those delegates based on the presidential voting preference. So showing up and signing in, is very important.

#2) Filling out the delegation can be done anytime before the convention secretary has to turn in the official paperwork for the convention. I think it's about 3 days here in Travis. We caucus on Tuesday night and by Friday our paperwork has to be delivered to the Travis County Party Chair. I did this exact same thing for the last convention, the off presidential year one. We had more county delegates assigned to us that we had people who wanted to move on. Remember gubernatorial elections years are not as sexy as presidential election years, so not as many people want to go to the state convention on those years.

So we filled out our delegation later by calling people who had voted in the primary to see if they wanted to go to the county/senate district convention.

Trust me 99.9% of us are not going to have that problem this year. This year everyone will want to go to the county & state conventions and it will be stiff competition in the pct caucuses to get elected.

That's my understanding of what filling out the delegation means. Yes you can do it after the convention, but in theory you are only doing that to fill available slots that were not filled in the PCT caucus. It' much more relevant in off presidential years.

Sonia

[crispini]

9. Ken Bailey was pretty clear that this year we would NOT be allowed

to fill out the delegation after the convention closes. This makes sense to me - if the person who takes it home is for candidate X and fills out the delegation for candidate X but not for candidate Y, then candidate X will have an unfair advantage at the SD convention.

[thevoiceofreason]

10. Thanks -- I'm trying to fit it into my work schedule.