RAUCUS CAUCUS! RAUCUS CAUCUS!

I got my constitutional republic/representative democracy on this weekend.

I came, I saw, I caucused.

I've never been to a caucus before, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I thought either it would be lecture-y and dull (a few people get up to talk about their candidates, blah blah blah platformcakes) or sorta Jerry Springer with everyone shouting over each other. It was neither.

I headed over about 20 minutes early and I'm glad I did -- there were so many people I still wound up parking about a block away. There were six or seven precincts meeting at the same venue, and the main room was quite packed already. I had to pull my voter registration card to find which precinct I was, but I could've found my precinct by looking around -- about half of the people around the table were folks I recognized from around my complex.

After signing in and realizing that there were all of two people in the room that had ever caucused before or knew what we were actually doing -- plus realizing we couldn't hear ourselves think -- we adjourned to a neighboring room. There were about 40 to 45 of us total - many had signed in and run (which you can totally do - I was thinking of it myself, but decided to stay on for the full experience) but about 20 or so of us stuck around.

The whole process sounds a lot more complicated than it actually was. People could sign in with a presidential preference or as undecided. We counted who was for what candidate, gave those that were inclined about a minute to express their opinion on why their person was superior (all the better to sway the undecideds or maybe bring someone over from another camp). We had a second count, crunched the numbers for actual delegates, then met in sub-groups by candidate to decide who'd go on to the next step as a delegate or alternate.

The number crunching took the most time. Oy, the math. The 'cheat sheet' the Committee handed us read like stereo instructions and contained complicated formuli... fortunately, we were few enough that the provided spreadsheet did the math for us. I wound up being the secretary, jotting down notes and initial figures and gathering any resolutions folks wanted to pass on for discussion at the next levels.

All in all, 2 hours reasonably well spent. Interesting to be a part of the process.