I attended my local precinct caucus last night (Democratic; did you need to ask?). It was held in the cafetorium (that's archaic, isn't it?) of a neighborhood elementary school. There were roughly 100 people there, and the party says it was a record turnout statewide. As more or less expected, Kerry won with ~46% of the vote; the surprise was that Kucinich came in second with ~30%. Kucinich was the only candidate who actually campaigned in the state (who said this guy was dumb?), and it obviously helped. Edwards was third and Dean fourth. Neither of the latter received more than the 15% required to gain delegates, so the twenty up for grabs were apportioned between the K boys.
It was an interesting experience. There wasn't any electioneering going on for specific candidates; it was almost as though everyone there had already made up his/her mind. Unlike Iowa, there were no preliminary vote counts to determine whether any candidate had fewer votes than the needed 15%, followed by attempts by other candidates' supporters to persuade those folks to switch. Each precinct sat at a table, and we voted by secret ballot.
After the presidential preference polling was complete, each precinct then had to select delegates to attend the county and state conventions; since many of us didn't have a clue who the other folks were, this was trickier. Somehow I ended up as a delegate to the county one; that should be interesting.
Posted by Linkmeister at February 25, 2004 04:08 PMHey, they tried to get me to be a county delegate, too ... I had to remind everybody over and over again that I'm moving out of the precinct tomorrow.
I can't believe that the other candidates didn't even bother campaigning in Hawai'i. It's Hawai'i, for goodness sake! Who wouldn't want to go there in February?! :)
Posted by: Elayne Riggs at March 2, 2004 06:35 AM