Caucusing in Minnesota

Tonight, we loaded the kids in the mini-van and headed over to our local high school to caucus for Obama.
We went early, thinking we could potentially avoid some of the crowds, but we sure weren't early enough. There was a lot of traffic, backed all the out of the high school, all the way down the main roads. It took us a good half an hour to get through the traffic and into the parking lot and then we headed in to major chaos inside. The turn-out was phenomenal. The time box on the voting made the entire experience so much more exciting--seeing all of our community merge together to caucus rather than the typical trickle at the local school or church for voting at the polls.

We first had to determine which precinct we were in by looking at badly labeled maps, and then headed to a high school classroom. By the time we got there, it was just about 7, and so the caucus process was starting. The caucus convener for our precinct was an old, short woman with a quiet voice who was reading the by-laws for caucusing. They went on to elect some precinct officials. We didn't stay long enough to participate in the discuss on the democratic platform. I figure all those old-time caucus goers were overwhelmed with all of us newbies to the process.


The room was jam packed--for some reason, two precints were included there. We had to register by signing in with our names and addresses, but there was no need to present any form of ID or proof of residency. I kept wondering how they keep Wisconsinites and Iowans from crossing the border to vote in our caucuses. After we signed in, they gave us a small piece of purple paper which was on ballot. We were to write the name of our candidate there and then put it in a box. That's our ballot? Crazy. I wrote Obama on mine, and MJ wanted to write it down on AJ's. The weird thing was the election workers had no idea how we were to vote for a senate candidate. They told us we were supposed to go somewhere else to vote for the senate. but, out in the hall, they told we needed to vote for them in our precinct room. We decided to take the kids and head out at that point. I wonder if they ran out of real ballots which would have had all of the caucus elections listed.

The good news is that Minnesota has been called for Obama.