Last night I went to the Caucus, which was an experience in itself. As someone who has never been to a Democratic caucus, I found it very chaotic. First of all, many people were outside waiting for the caucus to start. I'd say around 1200 people in my precinct waited. We were told we couldn't start the caucus until all the voters that got there before 7pm finished voting. The last voter finally voted at 8:25pm. During that time, people from the Obama camp were spreading FALSE INFORMATION to the crowd waiting. Someone was telling the crowd, once we get in that all we had to do was SIGN IN AND LEAVE. Obama supporters outnumbered Hillary supporters about 2 to 1 where I caucused. This WAS NOT the rules. The Hillary supporters that I found told us to stay put and not leave. The rules were we would all sign in, elect a chairman, secretary, and delegates. Some people didn't get that information and many did leave. So now it's 9pm and we still weren't allowed inside the building because they had to remove the voting machines from the premises. Ironically, the Republicans had their caucus at the same location but in a different room. However, there were maybe 50 people at the Republican caucus and theirs started around 830pm. Once we were allowed in, we had to find our precinct and sign in. Unfortunately for me, I happened to be in the largest precinct. We had over 300 people. It took over an hour for us to sign in. Many people did sign and leave. By the time the last person signed in it was now 1015pm. Obama supporters started doing their silly Yes we can! and Fired up ready to go! chants as we were waiting to sign in. At that point we were split into two groups - Obama group and Hillary group. As I said before, Obama supporters outnumbered Hillary supporters by a lot. We had 25 people in the Hillary group and Obama had about 110 people in our district. This is where things got REALLY crazy. Normally, in FAIR caucuses, there would be one Obama person as Chairman or secretary and the other would be a Hillary person. In this case, since the Obama supporters outnumbered the Hillary camp, they wanted to control BOTH positions. Not only did they want to control BOTH positions but they wanted ALL 17 Delegates our district had. They argued since they were the majority, that they should represent all 17 delegates. After fighting for 15 minutes and making a call to the DNC, our Hillary group ended up getting 6 delegates out of the 17. Their reasoning was that since we represented 40% of our district that we would get 40% of the delegates. Now we had to pick 6 delegates out of our 25 people. That was fairly quick as we all spoke about who would go to the March 29 caucus to represent us. After we chose our 6 and after they chose their 11, the rest of us could leave while the elected delegates, chair, and secretary stayed. After all that was said and done I was finally able to leave about 11:15pm. If this is any indication of how an Obama Administration will be, than NO THANKS! IF this is how Obama people ACT by spreading MISINFORMATION and INTIMIDATION....THEN I REALLY DON'T WANT OBAMA TO BE PRESIDENT! This whole experience makes me question the Democratic party even more but I still think - no I KNOW - I made the right decision in voting for Hillary over Obama! We can NOT let this MAN BECOME PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES! As someone said before, he may lead in the delegate count but he has proven that he can't carry BIG STATES. Not only that but the states that he won were traditionally RED STATES. That does not bode well for him in a general election. Hillary is the ONLY candidate from the Democrats to carry a general election in my opinion. She's proven she can withstand and overcome adversity. Obama and his supporters have proven to ME that they are low class and have tried to cheat their way into getting delegates.
After reading this, it just leads me to believe that Obama's caucus strength is one big sham. Were it not for the caucus process, his candidacy would have been long since over. Are Democratic voters getting hoodwinked here? WHAT IS GOING ON? Sounds unscrupulous and shady.
Just FYI, you could have signed in and then leave. You wouldn't have participated in the election of the delegates, but the ratios don't change, so Obama and Clinton would still get their proper number of delegates. Staying is mostly useful if you want to be more involved in the party (being a delegate, being active within the party, voting on various resolutions, etc). This part is weird - it's pretty standard in the rules that as long as each candidate has 15%, the delegates are distributed proportionally. I have no idea what the Obama people were thinking there. Wisconsin, Washington, Minnesota, Maine, Maryland, Illinois, Louisiana, Delaware, Connecticut aren't red states. Missouri, Iowa, Virginia, Colorado, Louisiana are swing states. He's won more blue states and more swing states than she has. He's won more votes. He's won more delegates. Perhaps we should say she can't win midsize states, swing states, people, or delegates, and thus it doesn't bode well for her in a general election? What a bizarre argument.
This is actually wrong too. If the caucus totals were 25 Hillary, 110 Obama, the delegate split should have been 18% for Hillary. If you had 17 delegates, Hillary should have gotten 3, and Obama 14. So technically, your "solution" was to cheat in Hillary's favor. The proportion of primary vote is irrelevant to how caucus delegates are distributed. This would change if your 25/110 totals didn't include the people that signed in and left. That total from the signin sheet is what determines the proportions.
That is exactly what happened. They counted the sign in sheet and determined that we would get 6 delegates to Obama's 11. I don't know the exact count because I didn't stand there to watch. It was one big cluster F@! as all the Obama people were crowding around not allowing Hillary people near the table. They were definetly trying to INTIMIDATE the Hillary people.
My sister had a similar experience last night. Obama supporters were rude, police were called when the school's janitor (Obama supporter) went up to a school's teacher (Hilary supporter) and tore up her voting card for Hilary and threw it in her face. To say the caucus experience was chaotic last night is an understatement. Obama volunteers also misinformed voters that they could leave after signing in. When a Hilary voter confronted the volunteer about it, she denied it and said "you can't prove it." And to top things off the judge never showed up. So who knows if the votes will count. I think it speaks more badly for the Democratic party than for Obama. There should be more structure at a caucus where it is not run by volunteers. Anyway I'm pretty sure Hilary supporters/volunteers were no angels last night either.
The irony is that I thought it would of been Hillary people trying to intimidate people. It was by far the other way around.
Well, rest assured, there are just as many stories of her people behaving just like you describe. Still, the math stands: Hillary apparently made out like a bandit in your caucus, unless you've posted some incorrect numbers.
They should videotape ALL caucuses to prevent this type of behavior. Am I surprised that Obama's supporters would do this? Nope. Not at all. Kind of expected it actually.
It was just where you were. In my experience the Hillary people streamrolled the Obama people. My post from the March 4 thread:
I was there too. I even have a small video of the Obama freaks. <object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/G1od_bfHh4w"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/G1od_bfHh4w" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
Republicans had their caucus in another gym, and we were at the main gym. They were called about 830pm to go upstairs to the other gym to start their caucus.
So if the delegates were determined from the sign-in sheet, and they counted the names on the sign-in sheet, than telling people they could sign in and leave was not spreading FALSE INFORMATION, correct?
