Or, at least it seemed like it.
Tuesday morning I voted, waiting outside in the (relative) cold for about 30 minutes. It turns out there were only five voting booths, and they had set up the check-in tables directly inside the door, so anyone not actually being helped had to wait outside. This didn’t seem to be a good idea, but it seemed they didn’t have very many other options inside the school, since they weren’t going to use the gym or something for voting.
Now, Texas has early voting, but while it probably works well for some people, I like voting on the actual voting day. In 2004 when we lived in Loring Park, I had to wait over two hours to vote, and I think that is awesome. I like being surrounded by people who are taking the time out of their day to voice their opinion.
Anyway, I also wanted to participate in the caucus, because I never have done that before. Caucusing was supposed to start at 7:15, so we were told to arrive at 7:00. I arrived at 6:45 and quickly realized this would be a long night. The parking lots were overflowing. The line to vote stretched down the side of the building – I’m not even sure where the end was. Thankfully I had brought a book.
I went inside and more and more people joined us in the cafeteria. And it started to get a bit unruly, considering there was something people hadn’t realized: the caucus can’t start until all the voting is done, and anyone in line at 7 gets to vote. A lot of people demanded that they be able to sign their candidate’s sheet and be able to leave, but thankfully (as that is against the rules and would make the signature invalid) those in charge stuck to their guns. Unfortunately those guns didn’t seem to work very well, as the entire thing was completely unorganized. No one should leave a microphone out in a room of 400 impatient people, for one thing. Plus, for all the people who were in charge there were more people who felt it was their duty to put themselves in charge.
Somehow, eventually we made it to 10 p.m., when the voting finished. By then we assumed things would be worked out so it would be quick and painless to sign the sheets and begin. Nope. More like mobs pushing to get into a concert.
Everyone was signed in at 11:30, and thankfully the group had thinned out to only about 85 of us who wanted to take part in the rest of the caucus. That turned out to not be very eventful, although sense of order went out the window again when it came time to sign up to be a delegate. You had to jostle for position and then snatch the paper as soon as the person ahead had finished, otherwise you’d be SOL. I was able to sign up and I’m still half-convinced I’m not actually going to be a delegate for the county convention.
Hopefully I will be. I’m interested in working on the issues they want to bring to the state and perhaps national conventions, and I think it would be amazing if I could somehow end up a delegate to national. I might just be a little too optimistic, but I’ve always been interested in politics and I think having a child has made me even more aware of the state of things and how my hand can turn it.
I got home at 12:15 a.m. Tired, but somehow riding a high.
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