Like I mentioned before, Heather and I had planned to attend the Iowa caucus.
It ended up being a little difficult to find where we were suppose to be, thanks to the last census having provoked redistricting of our area. I don’t really know the details except to say all the automatic tools that used to exist to tell you where your location is have been turned off on the state website until they get the new districts figured out. I am sure I wasn’t the only person to send an e-mail to the county clerk’s office last week, but they were quick to respond and we finally knew where to go.
Jump ahead to Tuesday night, and it turns out we weren’t the only people who wanted to participate. We got there 30 minutes early, and still had to walk in from a neighboring parking lot. After having our IDs checked against the voter registration logs we managed to find a seat in the arena type place hosting our caucus. By the time they have everyone checked in, we were 20 minutes late starting the caucus.
The time between our arrival and the actual start was spent setting quietly, trying not to gawk at the rapidly filling room. By the time everybody got inside I am told there were 3,000 voters attending. Typically I am not too shy about gawking at a big crowd, but in addition to the voters there were a good one hundred press type people with cameras roaming around looking to interview the unwary. Well, I don’t know if that’s how it worked, but I had no intention of being caught 🙂
After they got everyone inside we kicked off the proceedings. My impression is that the caucusing idea does not scale well… In a room of 25-30 people (a size I am told is more typical) having any old member of the community stand up and say a few words in support of his or her candidate wouldn’t seem out of place. When it’s a packed house like we had, it was clearly intimating for the speakers. Most of the speakers anyway, our last “speaker on behalf of the candidate” turned out to be the candidate.
Rick Perry got the same five minute window everyone else got, and managed to look a lot more comfortable doing it. Heather maintains he looked a little silly, and I don’t think there is any question he was more excited than anyone else in the room was in that moment.
After we heard a short pitch for all the candidates we were instructed to use the paper ballot we had been given to, well, vote. It’s at this point that we discovered we had been somewhat misinformed. Heather and I both thought we were going to have to re-vote and then re-vote again until our district managed a consensus for one candidate. Instead we just dropped our ballot in the box and went home. We later found out the “stay until there is a consensus” thing only applies to the Democrat party caucus.
When we woke up Wednesday morning to find that in the final count, only eight votes separated the winner from the second place candidate it really made the whole thing feel significant. To quote Heather “it makes me feel really patriotic, like we really had a say in something”
Speaking of having a say in things… and I hope this post is the one and only political post I have this year (there are plenty of places for that if you want to read it) I have added a badge off to the right side of the blog for the EFF. I just renewed my membership today, and think what they are doing is important.
Tune in next time where we will be back to cooking and adventures with Heather and Jordan 🙂
-Jordan
Nelsons 