This is the first of a series of posts with my experiences in the 2008 Democratic Primary, here in Lewisville
Sigh. The March 4th prima-caucus here in Texas was quite an experience, to say the least. I had fully intended to blog about my experience the next day – not because I thought anyone would really be interested, but because I wanted to preserve my memory of history in the making.
Of course, the next day was spent resting, recovering, and in damage control. And frankly, just thinking about my experience that day reminds me of how tired I was that night. And how strange is it to have the two simultaneous feelings of frustration and exhilaration?
A couple of years ago, when I became a Democratic precinct chairman, I learned what a precinct convention is. I had never attended one before, but I was told that you typically have no more than a handful of people show up. You do some paperwork, catch up with your neighbors, then go home and watch the returns.
And no matter how busy that it seems like I was in my description below, I could think of probably a dozen people who had it worse than I did.
Months Before the Primary
But as this primary approached, we began to see that it could be different. A couple of months beforehand, I realized that we had a lot of people more pumped up about this election than have probably been in past years. So, I thought that I would turn the precinct convention into a larger, more social event. With permission from my better half, I decided to host the precinct convention in my house. We would do our 5 minutes of paperwork, then have a party. After all, party rules allow the precinct convention to be moved. The precinct chair just has to post a sign at the polling location. I was really looking forward to having the company, and maybe meeting a new Democrat or two.
Keep in mind, this was months before the actual primary. There were still several candidates, but these contest are usually pretty much decided by the time they get to Texas. I was disappointed, but understanding when our party administrator recommended keeping my convention at the polling place. As it got closer to the election, I became more thankful for that input.
Weeks Before the Primary
When it became clear that Texas would be “in play” for the Democratic primary, I was thrilled, but a little scared that we needed to do a little more preparation to handle the dozens of people that I thought would turn out on caucus night. By this point, all of the locations had already been reserved and confirmed.
I posted all of the polling locations for Denton County on my blog, and wrote a bit about the process to try to help people understand how things would work.
I knew the classroom where our voting and caucus would be held would be cramped. It was about 1500 – 2000 square feet, most of which would be taken up with voting booths. I began to try to formulate how to get 10 precincts in there, and get set up for this while the tail-end of voting was going on. Little did I know that I was under-estimating by many orders of magnitude. In the days before early voting started, I actually made phone calls in my precinct to remind people to vote. How silly was that?
When early voting began, and daily vote totals started to come in, I discovered that early voting turnout was running about 1300% above 2004 levels. Had I multiplied that 1300% by the 2 -3 convention goers per precinct, I should have expected 260 – 390 caucus-goers. But I thought I may have 200 by this point. Even that was scaring me, because of the size of the room.
The week before the primaries, I worked hard to try to help find volunteers to help us at the caucuses. Although my location had a hundred parking spots, others had only dozens. I tried to find people to help park cars. I tried to find poll workers. And although I wasn’t scheduled to work the polls this time, I decided to go ahead and schedule off from work, just in case.
Days Before the Primary
I visited my voting location a few days prior to the election, and decided to see if I could go ahead and rent an extra classroom there. My location was a local recreation center, which had three classrooms and a gymnasium. I was informed that the other classroom had a yoga class going on that night, but they would be done by 7pm, and that likely nobody else would take it. The staff said they would work with me to get additional space in the other classroom if I needed it.
I talked to the presiding Election Judge on the weekend before, and we both agreed that things could get hectic. He also went and talked to the city staff in charge of the location. By this point, I began to hear that both the Clinton campaign and the Obama campaign were directing voters to show up early to the caucuses. Both campaigns had been training their supporters on how to run a precinct convention if they had to, and that comforted me a bit, since half of the 10 precincts at my location did not have precinct chairs.
What bothered me though was that I heard the rumor that the Clinton campaign was asking their supporters to show up first and “grab the packet”. This packet was the materials needed to take over as temporary convention chair and begin the convention. In normal years, whoever shows up gets things rolling. There’s no real advantage to it, since the numbers are what the numbers are. No candidate benefits – in theory. Nobody knows because the conventions had never come to this before that I knew of.
I wasn’t concerned that Clinton supporters would somehow try to “steal” the caucus. (I’m an Obama supporter) What I didn’t like was that I figured we would be trying to get our last voters processed, and we would have a bunch of people from each side trying to come in and bother us for packets. I was also concerned that the precinct chairs who had been trained to run these things would be usurped by novices from either campaign who could screw things up. To me, the biggest threat was losing the opportunity to engage a bunch of newly energized voters from each side.
We knew by this point that parking would be a major issue and several of our polling locations. We began to try to spread the word in every way we knew how. It went out on several email lists, both for local Democrats, and to the campaign lists I knew of. I knew how to contact the Obama groups, but I had no contact for the Clinton campaign or any local supporters. I visited the Clinton website, and tried to find groups near me, but the website kept timing out. I asked around to other Democrats, but got no help in finding the Clinton people.
Primary Eve
On the day before the primary, I was running around like crazy trying to get things done. I had invitations to a Democratic party fundraiser that I wanted to get printed up. I also had written a letter that I wanted to distribute to my precinct, and other attendees to explain why I was going to make them wait outside until after voting was done. I had anticipated that caucus goers might unintentionally mix with voters, and violate electioneering laws.
It snowed several inches that night, but my wife and I were both scheduled to work the polls the next day by now, and we went across town to get caucus training to make sure we knew what we would be doing. I also had made up a dozen picket signs announcing the polling location, and I had planned to put them out by the polling location so that new voters would know where to turn in. I had spent hours painting these signs by hand.
The television was non-stop with campaign commercials from both campaigns. TV and email both were stressing the importance of voting twice in the “Texas Two-step.” I began to panic just a little.
Primary Day Voting
My wife got up really early and was out to help one of our friends at the City Hall voting location. She was out there by 6:30 or so. I had to take the kids to school that morning, so I got them out with me early, and we put signs out by the polling location around 7:00, after a quick stop at McDonalds for breakfast and coffee.
At 7:30, when the school opened, I dropped off the kids, telling them to meet me down the street at the rec center after school.
Though I had a bunch of materials with me in my van to take in to the rec center, I went ahead and left them in the van, preferring instead to go in and see how much room I would have.
When I showed up in the voting room at about 7:45, I saw that it was already approaching chaos. The room was full with people lined nearly out the door. The polling book had been split into 4 chunks and four lines were already going. The election judge was busy stamping voter cards by the exit door. I dropped my junk and signed in to help. I asked the judge how he needed me, and he immediately put me to work stamping “Democratic” on voter cards and providing proof of voting to voters that didn’t have their cards with them.
Problem #1: Early voting clerks did not stamp voter cards consistently.
We knew from early voting reports that some people did not have their voter cards properly stamped, and that some didn’t receive proof of voting. We knew it would be a problem at caucus, so the party made special efforts to make sure that each election judge knew to make sure cards got stamped.
But, when you get swamped, all plans go out the window.
Problem #2: Lack of “Democratic” stamps on election day.
Normally, when a voter signs in on the poll book for a primary, you stamp their card immediately with the “Democratic” stamp. This prevents them from going to the Republican location and voting there also. It also serves as proof that you voted. However, our kit only had one stamp and stamp pad. We had four lines of voters going, and it would have been impossible to service the line efficiently and pass a stamp around.
Thus, I got stuck stamping voter cards by the exit. Every few minutes throughout the day, I would announce to the crowd that I needed to stamp their cards or provide them with a card to prove that they voted.
Problem #3: Too many folks did not have voter ID cards.
In January of even-numbered years, the county elections office is supposed to mail out voter cards. I received mine, but I heard from several people that they did not receive theirs. On election day, there were tons of folks who voted with their drivers licenses. For these folks, I had to fill out a little chit that required me to fill in the county, precinct, date, and voter name, and stamp it with our “Democratic” stamp.
My handwriting is awful and slow anyway, but by the end of the day, it was barely legible. In addition, many of the voters who voted with their drivers licenses failed to note which precinct they were in. This meant that I had to try to find out, or instruct the voter to go find out and write it on their card before they showed up for caucus.
Problem #4: Widespread confusion on how the caucus worked.
Throughout the day, I was the one that would end up explaining how the caucus worked, why we had it, and what you needed to do to participate. I think this is because everyone else was so busy processing regular and provisional voters.
We had several main questions:
• What time is the caucus? Correct answer: 7:15 PM or after the last voter has voted, whichever is latest. But, this answer caused more followup questions that caused my line to back up. I started telling folks to try to get there by 7:00 PM, and to try to carpool, since it began to look like parking even at my location was going to be scarce.
• How long does it last? / When does it end? It did not occur to me until later in the day that some voters may have thought that the caucus was a come-and-go event. I started to tell people that they needed to be there by the time sign-in began, but that they could sign in and leave if they were in a hurry and did not care to vote on delegates. Of course, this never failed to raise questions about what “delegates” meant.
• Why do we have to vote twice? / Will my vote still count if I don’t show up? I tried to briefly explain that roughly 1/3rd of the delegate count from Texas depended on caucus turnout, and that if the voter would show up, it helps their candidate. Many folks were under the mistaken impression that if they failed to show up, then their primary vote would not count. I think one of the campaigns (not sure which) must have told their folks that they had to vote twice. I tried to explain in the most brief and neutral way I could that it was optional, and that their primary vote would indeed count regardless of their attendance. After all, the primary is secret ballot. Even if we wanted to, there would be no way to find someone’s ballot and invalidate it.
Problem #5: Extreme Turnout.
I had hoped – perhaps naively that the early voting turnout was an indication that most people had simply voted early, and that our election day results would be lighter. That was most certainly not the case. We had huge numbers of voters. And it seemed to me that 80% of them intended to caucus, as they indicated to me by requesting their cards stamped, asking for a chit, or asking questions about the caucus.
By early in the day – maybe 9:00 AM, I began to estimate that we could easily have over 1000 caucus attendees. Luckily, the city staff had pro-actively cancelled all non-election-related activities there at the rec. center, and had reserved the gymnasium for us. I was still very concerned though. We already had the parking lot full, and all the driveways were fire lanes. The line was going out the door. We were getting so swamped that it was all we could do to keep up with our jobs, much less handle exceptions like these:
• Republicans showing up and waiting in line, getting a ballot and going into the booth before realizing they were at the wrong location. (Despite us having Democratic Primary signs everywhere)
• People who had been to other polling locations and been wrongly told they needed to vote at our location.
• People who needed assistance.
It’s not that we didn’t try. We did. It’s just that everyone there had two or three people tapping them on the shoulder at once.
I tried to be proactive by changing my announcements to include “This is the DEMOCRATIC primary location ONLY. If you’re here for another party, you are in the wrong location”.
At various points, supplies ran low, including my proof-of-voting chits. There were a few that I sent out as post-it notes. Luckily, there were runners who brought us supplies here and there.
Problem #6: Security and Parking Assistance
Early in the day, when I first stepped out and saw the parking situation, and I saw the long lines forming, I became worried that we may need some police help to maintain order. It wasn’t that I expected Democrats to raise hell. It’s just that you get belligerent people in every crowd. With a lack of parking, and the need to keep voters separate from caucus-goers later in the day, I worried that it may just turn into chaos without some peacekeepers on hand.
On the other hand, I know that in the past, police have served to intimidate voters and suppress certain turnout, so I didn’t take it lightly. I spoke with our election judge about it and we decided to inquire with the city about whether we could get police at our location.
I got busy and couldn’t call the city right away, but we did have a uniformed officer come in to vote that day. I spoke to him about it, and he told me I should call and ask.
I eventually was able to get word to the City Secretary about our situation, and heard back something about needing to pay for the police overtime. Knowing that we didn’t have a lot of money for this, I deferred making that decision for awhile, and eventually called the party chairman to ask whether we could swing it.
When he told me we didn’t have the money, I asked if I could pay for it. What I didn’t realize was that the city secretary was extremely busy at city hall helping voters over there who needed to find their precincts. She and I never spoke again that day, because we were both just way too busy. But I did put the word out to other people to see if they could help us.
At one point, I had a young female Army corporal in uniform come by to ask some questions about the caucus. We quickly determined that she would be ineligible to participate due to her out-of-state voter registration in Florida, but I did pitch to her the idea of showing up around 6:30 to help direct traffic and get people parked. I think I pitched that idea to several others. In fact, there were various people that we commandeered to help us throughout the day. It truly was all-hands-on-deck for this.
I am told – though I didn’t witness it – that there were indeed some volunteers helping with parking. The rec. center has a huge grassy open field across from it. Though it was soggy from the previous day’s now-melted snow, it would have to work.
Cars got stuck. There were volunteers who brought tow chains. Someone called a tow truck, that would eventually help some people. Unfortunately later during the caucus, the sight of a tow truck caused a scare when people said they were towing cars.
Problem #7: E-Scan machine messed up
The voting in my precinct was primarily on paper ballots - with only one DAO for electronic access for the disabled. The paper ballots were to be scanned in and read electronically in the E-Scan machine. At some point - I think it was early afternoon, but it was all a blur - the machine got "hung" and refused to accept any more ballots. The line of voters turning them in backed up quickly. Having experienced this in November, 2007, I unlocked the cabinet and opened up the emergency access slot on the side. This is where instead of scanning ballots in, the voter puts the ballot in a slot, and they stack up in a seperate tub from the previously scanned ballots. I turned around the slot and instructed voters to put the ballots in the slot.
I got on the phone and after a couple of busy signals, finally got in touch with someone and after 15 minutes or so, the machine was back online and ready to accept ballots. Voters started inserting them.
Here's the tricky part that to a casual observer may have looked fishy. When the line eased up, I had to get the emergency slot closed, and bring out the emergency tub to get those ballots scanned, and down with the other ballots where they belonged. So, I stood there, tub of ballots in hand - trying not to look at them or handle them too much. The election judge was a few feet away dealing with other voters. It was nothing under-the-table, but just probably looked funny to have someone running dozens of ballots through in-between voters.
I'll try to post Part II in the next few days. Part II will describe the caucus process |
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