NV Caucus

So the Nevada caucuses were on Saturday and I was really looking forward to it, partly for the new experience but mostly because I think participating in the politic process is so important and I think this election in particular is crucial. I was born and raised in NH, but went to college in MA, so I only ever voted by absentee ballot as a NH resident during college, assuming my Democratic vote was worth more there than in almost always blue MA. I also liked being able to vote in my small hometown's elections, town meetings, etc primarily to support the schools where my mom is a teacher. So my first experience voting in a booth was in the 2004 presidential election in Nevada. It wasn't even a real booth, but one of the electronic voting machines set a few feet away from the next with a privacy shield on each side of the screen. I voted for John Kerry and remember leaving the voting location that day and thinking that I had just participated in a part of history. I was glad to be voting in a true swing state, it felt like my vote was all the more important. We all know it swung in the opposite direction than I'd hoped, but it was a great feeling to have participated.

So the caucus rolls around and it's being hyped as an opportunity to gather and converse with your neighbors in a town hall style meeting. Really, NV chose a caucus instead of a primary because it wanted to move its date way up and not get its convention delegates stripped like the Democrats in Michigan and Florida. The powers that be wanted to move the date up so that the issues that are important to Nevadans might be given more weight and so we'd get more attention from the candidates than we might have otherwise. I'd say that was a success, the candidates definitely spent a lot of time here in the past year.

The caucus, however, was not a success. Our caucus location was at a middle school about a block from where we live. Registration went from 11 am – noon when the doors were promptly locked. We arrived at about 11:35 only to discover that we had no idea what actual precinct we lived in, which was important since there were 10 precinct groups at the same school. Quick phone calls to parents across the country with internet access eventually got us our precinct number and we then walked to the school’s gym, which was the home to our precinct’s caucus along with 3 others. Basically, we found our precinct area, sat with the Obama supporters within our precinct, got counted and left. There was none of this gathering and conversing with your neighbors business at all. It was so disorganized and poorly managed that I left feeling incredibly discouraged and honestly a little alarmed that official results could come out of a such an event.

There were 9 delegates (city delegates, I believe) to be won in our precinct. The total number of people who showed up in our precinct was 74. 26 Clinton supporters, 44 Obama supporters and 4 Edwards supporters. Since the Edwards group didn’t have 15% of the total support within the precinct, his group was deemed not viable to earn any delegates at all. The 4 Edwards supporters did have the opportunity to reconsider their vote and join either the Obama or the Clinton groups, but none of them chose to do so. This meant that there were 70 total votes in our precinct, 26 for Clinton and 44 for Obama. The delegates were split based on the percentage of supporters for each candidate, so Obama won 6 delegates (44/70 = 62.857% x 9 delegates = 5.657 rounded up to 6) and Clinton won 3 (26/70 = 37.143 % x 9 delegates = 3.343 rounded down to 3). How this turns into national delegates, I am honestly not sure. Senator Clinton did end up winning the overall NV caucus 51% to 45% for Obama and 4% for Edwards. However in terms of actual delegates to the national convention, Obama came out ahead. How this happened is described nicely here by the Associated Press:

“In Nevada, Obama won 13 delegates and Clintonwon 12, according to an AP analysis of caucus results. Obama won more delegates, despite getting fewer overall votes, because of the proportional manner in which Nevada awards delegates.

In most areas of the state where Clinton got the most votes, the party awarded an even number of delegates, so Obama and Clinton split them evenly. In some rural areas where Obama did better, the party awarded an odd number of delegates, allowing Obama to wind up with the additional delegate.”

Interesting. Also interesting to note, an “Only in Vegas” occurrence where one precinct had a dead tie between Clinton and Obama, and the tie was broken by a draw of the cards. I will be glued to CNN over the next few weeks and can’t wait to see the outcome of this very close, contentious and ultimately crucial primary season.

Comment by The Man: What a nightmare the whole process was. Unorganized, unoffical, underwhelming. Let me vote on my own schedule and then go home, dammit.