A CAUCUS-ING WE GO!

(Notes from the Portland Democratic Caucus)
From the Press Herald: “Statewide: More than 46,000 voters, including 4,000 who cast absentee ballots, participated in the caucuses, easily breaking the record of 17,000 from 2004.

Portland High School was mobbed with voters three hours before the caucus was scheduled to begin. A line of people stretched from inside the building to outside in the falling snow, with the end of the line falling on Congress Street -- three blocks from the school’s Cumberland Avenue entrance.

Turnout at the 2004 caucus was around 2,400. About 4,000 attended Sunday’s caucus. Asked why party officials were unprepared for the surge, given the larger-than-usual turnout in many other states, she said the party trained about 30 registrars for the caucus -- more than double the number used in 2004.”

So, yeah, we went. Arrived at 2:00 and were not too far back in line. The lines snaked around for blocks, and the snow was that heavy kind that melts into rain almost immediately into a rainy mess. We got to the doors in about a half hour, soaked, many were outside for over an hour. From there, we were another 2 hours in a line that went down hallways, through cafeterias and curved back onto itself several times. We met a woman in line who lives nearby and quickly became a threesome to contend with. We saved places in line and foraged for food and water for each other (luckily some school teams were selling popcorn, cookies, water and we came prepared with cash), gave folks dollar bills and change for the vending machines, and kept order when the riff raff tried to cut in line. I was most concerned about catching something in the “petri dish” of a school with thousands of damp people packed so closely together. Our new friend happened to have a spray bottle of some essential oil mixture that she makes from a recipe that thieves during the Plague used to rob the dead. So she sprayed the three of us liberally a few times.
We got through registration and headed to hear the speakers, stopping to stock up on free lolipops and cookies at the Obama table. Hilary had nothing we could eat or use, just recycled printed material leftover from (sigh) New Hampshire. The girl at the table offered to get us a sign and we followed her into the gym where she ripped a couple down from the wall...we removed the tape ourselves. Our friend decided to call it a day and turned in her form, hoping it would be counted.

An hour later, we decided to beat the rush to our caucus room and headed out before the Gov. of Massachusetts took the stage. The room was almost full when we got there. Found a seat with another new friend. Lots of jostling for positions of authority, who had the most knowledge of Parliamentary Procedure, etc. Luckily, our state rep. was there to keep order (and do the math, which was shown longhand on the blackboard as we went along). We took our chairs with us out to the hallway when the Hillary people were banished. Eureka! Guess who brought the snacks for this leg of the journey? The Hillary people! Homemade brownies and cookies, and chips and fresh salsa. Put into real bowls, no less! My memory gets fuzzy at this point, but I sort of even remember a table cloth. We waited another hour and a half. Made another friend who I had seen at pilates class. Turns out she is a printmaker and told me all about a technique using a computer and a laser printer. Cool. I think the earlier CocaCola we shared kicked in and Aimsel gbecame obsessively focused with helping our new friend program her just bought today cell phone and change the ringtone, wallpaper, etc. so I didn’t see her for about an hour. I curled up across two chairs and used Aimsel’s fleece cape as a blanket.

We all went back in to vote, the snacks long gone by now and everyone just irritated and tired. An announcement was made that the parking garage was closing at 8:00, a few panicked and were restrained. Votes were tallied, divided, multiplied, made into percentages, morphed and spit out into delgate votes. Seeing that the Hillary camp had plenty of Wanna Be Delegates, we took off and made the icy trek home. Got in at just about 8:00.

Moral of the story: vote by absentee ballot in the General Election, but go to the polls anyway, you can bypass the lines and go right to the bakesale that they always hold on election days (it’s in the little hallway along the front of the East End School).
~TRACY

Oh yeah, the Maine results? (from PPH) “The Illinois Democrat beat Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., by a margin of 59 percent to 40 percent with 95 percent of precincts reporting, giving Obama 15 of Maine’s 24 pledged delegates who will be bound to vote for him at the party’s national convention.”