Attending my first caucus last night was a fun little event. It definitely had a small town type of feel. I was most pleased that “my guy” won the township and as it turns out, the whole state!
We met in the junior high school “new” gym. We had to park about 5 blocks away and was it ever cold last night! There were about 150 people representing our township. Two other townships also met at the junior high. We sat with some neighbors who have been caucusing since the dawn of time.
The organizers had made a big deal of the starting time in all the literature and in our reminder call, “It begins at 6:30. Doors close at 7:00” We had to laugh that while yes, the doors closed at 7:00 on the dot, people were still opening them. We actually got started about 7:10 but residents were rolling in all the way until right before we voted at 7:40.
They had a lot of little business to do, like nominating someone to run the meeting, and a secretary, and someone to call in the results. Then the chairman asked if anyone had a speech for John McCain. He got a volunteer for that. He spoke a brief two minutes and we also heard an impromptu speech for Mike Huckabee, and for Fred Thompson and someone got up to read a form letter they had received from Mitt Romney’s campaign. None of the other candidates had supporters willing to speak for them. We all wrote down our picks on little pieces of paper, sharing pens as we did so.
I volunteered to help collect and count. We sorted all the ‘votes’ and I ended up counting Mitt Romney’s. There were 45. Then I felt obliged to offer someone to recount, the guy standing next to me (who happened to be wearing a Romney sticker) accepted. He had to start over twice and fumbled around, and dropped all the papers and we were all waiting on him to count to 45. He counted 46. I’m still miffed, because since everyone was tired of standing around, they just accepted his total.
That was it. It was a lot less of a big deal than I thought, but I still felt proud to take part in my American privilege to vote and have my voice heard.
On the way out, we greeted more neighbors, including someone on Kevin’s paper route, who said to Kevin, “Well hello Paper Boy!” and to me, “Hello Mrs. Paper Boy.” Kevin has been calling me Mrs. Paper Boy all day.
It was a fun experience, despite my ability to count being called into question.
I too enjoyed the caucus. The “crazy left-winged liberals” that I was with (ha!) do it a little differently. I was thrilled though that so many people were in attendance, and was also pleased that my man placed 1st!!!