Washington Caucuses

It's caucus day for Washington state! Your Humble Narrator did indeed rouse himself from thick, rich, creamy slumber to go do his small part for the democratic, Democratic process. (Pausing only to buy tickets to David Bowie's April show at the Key Arena when they went on sale at 10am; I missed him at the Paramount in January, and I'll be damned if I'll be shut out again.) I made it to Seattle Central Community College on Broadway just in the nick of time to sign in; and the rest was history. Thirty-seven people, myself included, turned up from my precinct; the organisers estimated there were 500 to 600 people total in this one large hall, one of two in the building housing precincts from the 43^rd legislative district. It was, apparently, quite a turnout. The organisers, alas, had not planned for it very well. The room was packed, difficult even to move through, let alone converse in. Almost all of the precincts were jammed inside in little knots, their internal conversations and debates almost drowned out by the background noise. I couldn't hear a lot of what people were saying, and I was not alone in this. It was hot and uncomfortable; discussion was very limited and lasted no more than 15 minutes; the chaotic and oppressive atmosphere discouraged people (like me) from actually saying anything, and as a result the discussion consisted almost entirely of prepared sound bytes from the hardcore campaign people.

This was my first caucus, and I have to admit that I didn't like it at all. In a perfect world, I would never have to go through this again. Maybe they're just run better in Iowa.

How did we do, you ask? As I said, 37 people turned up from my precinct. The initial breakdown was 18 for Dean, 8 for Kerry, 4 for Kucinich, 3 for Clark, 3 undecideds, and 1 Edwards, so only Dean and Kerry made the 15% cut and moved on to our fabulous Bonus Round. Then came the speaking. Kerry's speaker was hostile and abrasive, which was apparently not an isolated incident today. In my precinct, he was basically slinging mud; he claimed Dean didn't have the temperament to be president and pointed to his post-Iowa scream speech, which pissed me way the heck off because, as I've mentioned before, that was entirely an artifact of dishonest media coverage, as Diane 'Soulless Clockwork Whore' Sawyer herself has admitted. I think this guy actually turned people off to Kerry. Oh well. Kerry never had much of a chance in my precinct; the turnout was almost all homos and aging professionals, with homos holding a majority. And a Dean campaigner had very cleverly come equipped with a newspaper article about the recent Massachusetts ruling that only same-sex marriage, and not mere civil unions, would be acceptable. Kerry, as you are no doubt aware, supports civil unions but officially opposed gay marriage. That, as you might imagine, did not go over so well with the gays. When the second vote was held, Dean had 26, Kerry just 10, and one Clark guy had left before he could change his vote and so didn't count. Of our five delegates, Dean took four, and Kerry just one. It came down, modulo a few other people, to a straight split between bohemians and the bourgeois.

The Deaniac with the newspaper admitted what we all know, that Dean will not be the nominee. We acknowledged that. But the longer he stays in the race, and the longer until a nominee is crowned, the longer debate can continue and the longer the race can suck in media attention. Which is why I didn't just give up and stay home, as I'd seriously considered doing.

There are a number of things about the caucus process that bother me. Most of them boil down to precincts.

• Consider mine. Thirty-seven people turned up; but regardless of that, based solely on its population the precinct had five delegates to allocate. If I'd been the only person to show up, I could've done any darn thing I wanted with them. The delegates a precinct assigns do not necessarily reflect the desires of the citizenry; I think we'd get better and more representative turnouts with a primary election instead, which is painless, more flexible, and requires much less commitment.

• This business of delegates, like the electoral college federally, is a buffer between voters and their votes, and the actual outcome of the process. I don't like that. The precinct is too small an entity to warrant that kind of vote quantisation. Dean wound up with something like 72% of my precinct's final vote, and Kerry about 28%; but because you can't give someone three-fifths of a delegate, the actual outcome was skewed towards Dean in a way that, while it may suit my personal political ends, was not quite representative of the voting. That just isn't fair. If you must amalgamate voters, it shouldn't be done on any lower level than legislative districts; precinct turnouts are just too small. They make the rounding errors unreasonably large.

• Why bother with delegates, anyhow? What are they for? They go on to the county and district and whatever caucuses in May; but where is the point of those later caucuses? We, the People, have already voted, and won't get to vote again; if we can't change our minds, our delegates sure as heck shouldn't be allowed to, and if that's the case, why have delegates at all? There should be no debate and no jiggery-pokery after the Little People have voted. Maybe delegates aren't allowed to change their minds; I don't know. Maybe this isn't an issue. It seems like a lot of extra, needless fuss, though, and these May caucuses seem like needless bureaucratic flab.

It seems as if it'd be fairer and more efficient--and less hassle--to give up the caucus thing altogether, and switch to a Single Transferable Vote primary system instead. Maybe I'm just on crack, who knows...

At least it's all over now. The results should be out in a few hours.

Posted by aloysius at February 07, 2004 01:35 PM | TrackBack |