Absolutely No Machete Juggling

This past Super Tuesday, I participated in the Caucus in Colorado. This was my first experience doing anything like this. I vote in every election, but typically I have absentee ballots mailed to me in order to vote. I'm normally registered as an independent, so I can't do much more than vote in the election itself anyway. This year, however, was quite different. I actually got involved.

Getting involved, in short, sucked. This is my story of why. Normally I would put pictures into a post this long, but I didn't realize until the Caucus was over that it was going to be such a ridiculous experience as to warrant a blog post, so I didn't take any pictures. Good for you if you manage to get through all of this anyway.

Background

For the first time, hearing a politician speak actually got me excited. Normally I view voting as a choice between the lesser of two evils, but for the first time a candidate was talking about things that really mattered to me. Ron Paul talked not only about how we shouldn't be in Iraq, but about how our foreign policy is actually making us less safe, from a practical standpoint. Ron Paul talked about how the executive branch has gotten too powerful, and it needed to be trimmed back. He talked about empowering states, and he talked about decreasing the overall power of the federal government. These were all things that were important to me, and hearing a person actually running for president talking about those things got me excited enough that I registered as a republican so I could support him.

Now, that was many months ago. Since that time, my support for Ron Paul has decreased. Not dramatically, but I'm nowhere near as enthusiastic as I was once. While the idea of adopting the gold standard for currency and abolishing the IRS both appeal to me, they both seem too extreme to do anything other than hurt the country. Ron Paul's stances on technology greatly irritate me - particularly that people trumpet it as a good thing (many clamor that "he voted against regulating the internet" like it's a reason to vote for him. I don't think people understand that was a vote AGAINST Net Neutrality). He has pushed numerous pieces of legislation forward that seem to contradict his world view of limited federal government, most notably bills that have to do with his personal religious beliefs. He is pro-life (I'm not). He trusts the free market a bit too much for my personal taste (a common problem with Libertarian candidates, who would seemingly like to remove things like the FDA). Despite all of these reasons (which would normally make a candidate lose my support), he still trumpets more than any other candidate how important our civil liberties are. In a "post 9/11 world", it's rare to see a politician actually espouse the position that our liberties are more important than our safety, and Ron Paul still does - vehemently. The short of all of this is that, by the time the caucus rolled around I was still a big Ron Paul Fan, but I was no longer a Ron Paul Zealot.

At the same time, Barack Obama was talking about a lot of things that mattered to me as well: the war, civil liberties, the war on drugs, and he also got bonus points for his views on technology. Between Obama and Ron Paul, I would have a hard decision to make. Yes, the two disagree on a LOT, but that doesn't mean it's impossible for me to support either one. Support for Paul would only exclude support for Obama if I supported ALL of Ron Paul's policies, which I do not. Their overlap is significant, and they both appeal to different aspects of what is important to me.

By February 5th, the republicans still in the running were Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney and John McCain. Of those four, Ron Paul is, in my opinion, the best candidate by miles. There was no need, at that point, to consider the fact that I was growing increasingly partial to Obama, since Obama wasn't running as a republican. On February 5th, I had two options: one, I could stay home and not participate at all on the grounds that I might not vote for Ron Paul if he were running against Obama, or two, I could recognize that Paul is the best republican of the bunch, and as a registered Republican I only had a say in the Republican Caucus.

I figured that the experience alone was worth the price of attending. I had specifically registered as a Republican in order to support Paul, so I figured I may as well do just that. It was either that or do nothing, so I picked do something.

Next time I do something "for the experience", I may want to think twice.

Preparing For The Caucus

I told my fiancee that I'd be home in a few hours. I expected to go to the Caucus, find the Ron Paul delegates, vote for them, and go home. I wound up getting home 7 hours later, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Apparently only about fifty people showed up to the Caucus 2 years ago (not surprising since it was a midterm election) and only about 20 showed up in 2004 (not surprising since Bush was the incumbent). In 2000, Colorado used a traditional Primary system. Basically, the people running the show simply had no idea that over 800 people were going to show up for this thing, and they were not prepared for it.

Parking was a challenge. I had to drive into a nearby subdivision and park next to some random person's house, then walk about half a mile to the school. As I walked past lines of cars with "Respect Life" license plates and "Bush '04" bumper stickers, I began to wonder if perhaps I was making the wrong choice. I felt like I was infiltrating a secret society.

Once I got to the middle school where my county's caucus was held, I walked inside only to discover that the line to check in started outside, then to the front door of the school, then to the back of the school, then curved and came all the way back up to the front door. Then it curved again, went all the way back, and then back to the front again where the table was. Needless to say, check-in took hours. I was able to stand in line for quite some time, making observations about those around me. Here are the main generalizations I walked away with:

• Republicans are all white. I realize that this is a common stereotype, but I had never seen it so well illustrated. There wasn't a single non-white person in the whole crowd of 800 that I could see. No black people, no latino people, no asian people. Just white folks. I realize I'm in Colorado, but damn.
• Republicans love to bash democrats. Most people, when they have nothing to talk about, discuss the weather. In a uniformly republican setting, republicans like to bag on democrats. At one point, a lady with a baby asked if she could cut through the line outside to get indoors so her baby wouldn't be cold. I made some crack about the baby being a registered voter, and the people nearly responded with 100 variations of "no, you're thinking of democrats." Ugh.
• Republican women are either old or hot.. There was no middle ground. Most of the women were silver-haired old ladies that looked on the verge of death. All of the other women, however, looked like they walked out of a magazine. Whenever I see democrats assembled together, the women all look like unshowered, fat hippies. I don't get it.

Eventually I got to the check-in table. The lady took my driver's license and asked if I was the only person with my last name. What the hell? How should I know? I told her yes authoritatively, fearing she might turn me away if she found out I had no idea how many people with my last name were registered republicans.

Let The Caucus Begin

The first step was to find the table with people from my precinct. I was given a name tag that told me my district, so I walked through 800 people to find it. Once I found the table, I tried to listen to the various people there, hoping I could learn something about how caucuses work, since I had no idea.

Unfortunately, nobody else had any idea either. My precinct leader didn't know what the hell she was doing, and said so. I set about figuring out who the other Ron Paul supporters were. This was easy. Everyone fell into one of two categories: "old, fat people" and "kids that looked younger than 18". Unsurprisingly, the folks in the second category were the Ron Paul folks. One of them had a Ron Paul pamphlet from the rally a few days earlier. Another had what appeared to be a Ron Paul CD. I have no idea what was on that disc.

In any case, here is what I learned about how Caucuses work. Basically a precinct gets a certain number of "delegates" meant to represent that precinct. The precinct has to pick the delegates, and then those delegates go off with other precinct delegates from the same district. Districts get a certain number of delegates, they pick the delegates, and those delegates move up another level. This continues through various levels until all of the candidates have dropped out except one, who gets the nomination by default and the delegates all stay home.

We had to write our names and phone numbers down on a sheet of paper, and then everyone in the precinct had to decide who the delegates would be. Apparently the little instruction manual said something along the lines of "decide amongst yourselves" for advice on how to choose people, which meant nobody knew of a fair way to decide. Our chair, who I will refer to as Female Skeletor, started by asking who wanted to be a delegate, then answered her own question by saying she did. The only other Ron Paul guy in the group, who looked a Backstreet Boy (and will now be referred to as Lance Bass), expressed reservation about being a delegate (he wanted to be an alternate) but volunteered. I did as well, cuz I had to repazent.

There were only two more people, so one of them volunteered to be the other delegate. Female Skeletor's solution to the problem of picking who got to be delegates and who got to be alternate was quite elegant: draw names from a hat. As everyone knows, random chance is what the political system runs on. That's why we don't vote in elections, but rather flip a coin. What? We don't do that at all? Oh.

Eventually we convinced Female Skeletor she was stupid and decided to vote for who should become the delegates. Unfortunately, there were only 5 people in the group, which meant Fifth Guy got to decide who would be the delegates and who would be the alternates. Female Skeletor asked us to declare who we were supporting so Fifth Guy could make his choice. Lance Bass and I declared Ron Paul, so Female Skeletor and Other Lady declared Romney. Fifth Guy asked who Ron Paul was, so we handed him Lance Bass's info sheet. He said Ron Paul looked interesting, but he wasn't sure. I asked him what he thought of the war, and he said he wants us out of Iraq. I said so does Ron Paul. He voted for me as a delegate.

Well that was easy. All I have to do is ask these people what they think of the war, and when they say it sucks I tell them Ron Paul wants us out. Bang, I get a Ron Paul convert. Easy-peasy. I tried my luck on Skeletor, who explained that if we weren't in Iraq "all of them would be over here converting us all to Muslim and killing everyone else". I quickly gave up on that plan.

In the end, Skeletor and I became the delegates, with Lance and Other Lady as alternates.

Not long after I had been chosen as a delegate, a few more people from our precinct decided to show up. Everyone was chatting and waiting to be told what we were supposed to do next. I was talking to Lance Bass, and suddenly Female Skeletor came up to me and told me that one of the guys who got here late (Late Guy) really wanted to be a delegate, so she crossed me off and put him on instead. "Do you mind?" she asked.

Um. Yeah, I kinda mind. I asked Late Guy who he supported and he said Romney. There's a shocker. I explained that I had won the vote fair and square, and if she wants Late Guy on the list, she should cross herself off to put him on. I got a dirty look for this, because apparently my suggestion is downright CRAZY.

While we were waiting, some guy came on over the microphone, and asked us who hadn't yet voted in the straw poll (an informal poll that gets used by the media as though it was a vote). Everyone raised their hand. He went on to explain that there were 700 people in the room, and they had started the night with about 800 straw poll sheets and they were all filled out now. Awesome.

The Next Level

In any case, eventually everyone who had not become a precinct delegate left, leaving only the delegates and alternates. Once again, we had to "decide amongst ourselves" who would become our district delegates. The district got 3 delegates and 3 alternates. There were a total of ten precinct delegates around to vote on this round. Once again, nobody knew what voting mechanism we should use to decide which three of the ten would become delegates and which three would become alternates. Once again, Female Skeletor suggested drawing from a hat and was ignored. Once again, everyone was told to reveal who they supported. Three of the ten (myself and Lance included) were Ron Paul supporters, while the other seven were for Romney (McCain was not a crowd favorite). The third Ron Paul guy suggested that, since there were 3 delegates that needed to be chosen and one-third of the folks were in favor of Paul, one delegate should be a Ron Paul person and the other two should be for Romney. This seemed fair, but the Romney folks would have none of it.

Instead, this is the system they designed: everyone would vote for their top 3 delegates. Then we'd total everyones votes up. The three most popular people would become delegates, and the next three would become alternates.

I explained that this system was stupid. All the Romney folks had to do was pick the same 3 people to vote for and they'd obviously get all three delegates. That would leave the district as 100% represented with Romney supporters, even though a third of us were Paul fans.

A Romney supporter told me that's not true. They may wind up splitting the vote and it would work in our favor. I explained that if they split the vote, they're idiots, because all they have to do is decide on the same three people and they get all three delegates. I asked why they WOULDN'T do that. Her response was "I dunno."

Despite our protest, the Romney people then immediately huddled up together and whispered about who they were going to vote for as delegates. Shocking. Since there were only 3 Ron Paul people, we all voted for the same three people.

We stood there shaking our heads in anger as the votes were tallied up, waiting to inevitably be told that none of us were going to be delegates. But then something interesting happened: the Romney folks DID actually split their votes. Everyone voted for themselves and the people from their precinct, one Romney person threw a single vote in the direction of a Ron Paul supporter (probably by accident), which was exactly the number needed to put one Ron Paul supporter in the top three.

Me.

The Reluctant Delegate

I couldn't believe it. I had stood there and explained to these people how they could secure all three delegates, and then they failed to do so anyway. Apparently, Romney supporters are really, really bad at math. After the Romney folks wiped their look of shock off their faces, one of them smugly cracked "not such a stupid way to vote now, is it? You got your way after all."

"Actually," I explained, "it was. The stupidness of the system is unchanged by the fact that you all failed to use it strategically." The two other Ron Paul guys told me to shut the hell up, since we won. So much for an interest in fairness. It's fair enough if we win, right? Assholes.

Once all of the decisions had been made, the gloves came off. Literally. All of the Romney folks pulled folded-up red foam baseball mitts out of their jackets and began waving them around. "Mitt '08" they said. They had been hiding them all night, probably so that McCain supporters wouldn't realize they supported Mitt and do exactly to them what they tried to do to us. It provides me with infinite satisfaction to know that their boy dropped out of the race two days later. Just thinking of each of them throwing their foam mitts in the trash brings me great joy.

They then had to collect money from each of the new delegates. Fifteen freaking dollars. You hear that, Ron Paul? You owe me fifteen bucks. Fifteen bucks worth of gold, in fact, since you're such a big fan.

Given the fact that the Romney folks had tried to exclude me twice after finding out I was there for Ron Paul, I felt the need to stick around until the yellow sheet with my name next to the words "State Delegate" was sealed inside a manila envelope and handed to the caucus organizer, so I didn't get to go home for quite some time.

I'm in a very weird position now. I now have to go to the next caucus on March 6th and express my support for Ron Paul, even though I very well might not vote for him in the general election. I have to go convince a bunch of religious zealots that he's a good candidate for them because he is pro-life, even though I am not. I feel compelled to continue, not for my own sake, but because I feel like I am representing other people who now are relying on me to go support Ron Paul. My real motivator for not wanting to just give up is that those Romney jerks want me to give up.

I barely even understand the caucus system, but I'm my district's lone Ron Paul representative. The guy is still way better than McCain, but I'm nowhere near as passionate about him as I once was. Yet, the people I am representing ARE that passionate about him, so I feel compelled to feign the same level of excitement. A small part of me wishes he would drop out and run as a third-party candidate, just so I don't have to go to the next caucus and deal with this crap again.

Statistical Summary

Here are the key statistics from these events.

• Number of times I thought to myself "what the fuck am I doing with these people?": 5
• Number of times I was called naive for supporting Ron Paul: 2
• Number of black people at caucus: 1
• Number of McCain supporters encountered the entire night: 1
• Number of times someone referred to the democratic front runners as "Hitlery and Osama": 4
• Number of times it was said by a fellow Ron Paul supporter, making me feel embarrassed: 4
• Number of times the word 'faith' was mentioned as an important reason to support Romney: 6
• Number of times I was stunned into silence by a stupid claim from a Romney supporter: 3
• Number of times Romney supporters tried to exclude me from the process: 2
• Number of times they failed: 2
• Number of Ron Paul converts I won over: 1
• Number of votes it took to make me a district delegate: 1
• Number of votes it took to make me a state delegate: 4
• Confidence level, on a scale from 1 to 10, in Caucuses: 0
• Number of hours I expected the caucus to take: 2
• Number of hours it actually took: 7