My Nevada Caucus Experience

Today is/was the Nevada Democratic Caucus.  Being a loyal Democrat, there was no way I wasn't attending.  I had been to a few various democratic meetings in the weeks leading up to this, so I knew what to expect, sort of.

Unlike Election Day, where admittedly, I never felt that my voice mattered that much (don't get me wrong, I vote, it just never mattered that much, living in a Red state), this caucus thing was awesome.

So here's how it went.  Registration began at 11:00 am and the doors closed at noon (meaning no one else could come in/be counted if they weren't registered by noon).  Once in the building, I got in a line.  I signed in (just like voting day) on a paper that already had my printed name ready to go.  I was given a Presidential Preference Ballot form and asked to sit in the room until the process got underway.  Around 11:40, the temporary chair started to tell us the agenda for the day.  There were a few things that needed to get out of the way, like voting on a permanent chair, etc.  I was told ahead of time that usually the temporary chair (which is a volunteer who goes through a lot of training to prepare for the caucus day activities, usually ends up being permanent chair.  Our process went exactly like that.  The temp chair nominated himself, everyone said "ay" and that was done.

Next was counting all of the registered people.  The chair went around the room and counted.  He said, from the phone calls he had made leading up to the caucus, he expected about 20-30 people.  His count- 100.  A nice even number that we all appreciated.  An even 100 is good b/c in determining a candidate's viability, you use percentages, and 100 would make it much easier (math-wise).  Also, 100 people meant our precinct would get 7 delegates to go to the county convention.

Then we broke into groups, sitting on different sides of the room based on who our preferred candidate was.  Once divided, the smaller groups were then counted again, to determine a) if the candidate had at least 15% of the people, he would be viable, and b) to determine, if viable, how to divide the delegates between candidates..

In our precinct, 60 people were for Clinton, 2 for Edwards and 38 for Obama.  Edwards, not having at least 15%, was not viable. This means he would not get any delegates from our precinct.  It also meant his supporters could leave, or decide to have a second preference and switch to one of the other candidates.  1 person left, 1 switched to Obama.

Next, the chair filled in a mathematical equation given to him by the Democratic party, which basically took Clinton's 60 people and Obama's 39 people and determined how many delegates each would get.  Clinton got 4 of the 7 and Obama got 3. 

Next within the separate preferential groups, delegates had to be chosen.  A sheet of paper went around and if you wanted to be a delegate, you put your name down. Delegates and an equal # of alternates needed to be picked.  Once people volunteered, they went around the group and each volunteer got to say a little something about themselves and why we should choose them.  Once that was done, the leader of the preferential group would say the person's name and we would vote.  Highest vote getters (3 for Obama, 4 for Clinton) would be the delegates, next highest, the alternates.

The process of the delegates I think is fascinating.  These people will go to the County Convention on Feb 23 in Las Vegas (Clark County).  From there I believe the same process occurs to dwindle down the number of delegates that go to the state convention (in Reno I think).  And then the same process again to determine how many go to National. If you think of all the precincts in the state doing this, you can imagine at each level this gets more and more competitive.  Someone I spoke to last week, who'd been a delegate before, told me that people get backing (like unions) and actually campaign to be the delegate.  In the end I think (and I should really look this up for accuracy) the whole state only gets like 2 delegates that get to go to the National level.

Anyway, once the delegates were chosen, that was basically the end.  Doors opened and we left.  The whole process took approximately 2 hours.  there were a lot of laughs, a little grandstanding (mostly Hillary supporters berating Obama supporters) and all in all a really great experience.  My voice (or at least my raised hand) counted today.