Sitting at Jason Lee, I was outraged, I had one thing on my mind. Introducing my new tag: I’m Blogging This
iPhone: I have been at the Jason Lee middle school since 8 am (its now noon). Only now are they getting through the 4th of the 30-something prisincts... I'll be here for another several hours. Moral of the story, people are incompitent, especially en masse.. More to come
Edits:
/wrists
Holy Cow...
What a horrible process this is. They were describing how this year, the caucus would happen at break-neck speeds thanks to the wonder of technology! We weren’t done with figuring out if everyone was there until 2 PM. That is 6 hours of sitting in a hot, sweaty hall filled with a whole bunch of crazies. I had a woman sing to me. She actually sang a song. About democracy. I tried to escape, but she followed me. She had a whole repertoire about the corruption of the government, and how the democrats will save the day.
I was an alternate delegate, but was eventually seated around 12:50 because none of the real delegates actually showed up. There was then a big confusion/miss communication over what came next. This was when I realized how dumb the whole thing was.
Grass Roots?!The whole point of a caucus is to encourage grass roots politics. You all get together, discuss and well, caucus. But in an effort to streamline the process, the modern caucus involves assembling and then listening to minute long speeches from each side. The kicker is that the campaigns pick in advance who is going to give the speeches, so there is really no grass roots anything going on. Also, 1 minute speeches? You would have to be an expert at framing to be convincing at all in that amount of time. Basically, by the end of the speeches, nothing is different except people are that much more ticked off because they are losing that much more of their Saturday.
Once speeches and registration was done, the next step involved voting on the delegates that would go on to other caucuses... But really, who cares? The division of delegates is the same for each candidate, if someone thinks they should go, let them. Suddenly I realized was duped into this. Delegates are completely symbolic. They represent a vote. In a past system, maybe their voice mattered, but not anymore. If a precinct delegate didn’t show up, minus one vote for that candidate. One is no big deal, a lot might throw things off. So once I got my arm band as a delegate, I was entered into the system. As far as the presidential race is concerned, thats all that matters. So then I ask, why am I wasting my Saturday? We didn’t sit and have a ceremonious vote for a candidate or anything, we are just a further symbolic representation of what happened in the first caucus, minus the people too lazy to show up.
Why couldn’t they just count the people who signed up? Why did they have to have us physically there in order to count us? Why did they ruin my weekend? And why did they call me when I got home and ask why I wasn’t there?! I HAVE AN ARM BAND!
Caucuses are a good idea for small things. In the current system, primaries are the only way to go.
Technology could have helped in SO many ways. Swipe ID when you show up, computer then automatically figures out who is there and who isn’t instantly. The computer then calls the alternates needed to tell them to come (or provides a list to volunteers to make the call). Hooray, we just saved 6 hours of day light! Now we can talk and discuss, forget that we are all set in our ways and bickering, there is one undecided delegate here!!! Hooray for democracy!
Anyway... back to school.
