Caucus 2010

What a crazy night we had and I loved it!

To start out, we had no idea so many people would show up. In 2006 they had 25 people, in 2008 we had 34 people, this year our total was 65+ (I had to hand in the papers, before I counted them, but I think it was 69). It took awhile for people to get signed in. I knew more people were coming this year, but not that many more and not 30+ right when it was time to start. We had 14 people who were newly registered or changed their affiliation. It was so great to have everyone there. A special thanks to my amazing husband for working the registration desk!One of the things that should happen is that the meeting starts on time. However, we had so many people come right before 7, that I was asked to start late.

We went through all the normal business: prayer, flag, pledge, caucus rules, reading the county platform, and asking for donations (we had $104).Then it was time to elect precinct officers. I gave the candidate and balloting rules. I had planned on doing multiple balloting (which is what they told us to do in our training), where the lowest vote getter is removed from the list and then you re-vote. A few hours before the caucus I was told that was against Roberts Rules. I looked it up and sure enough, Roberts Rules states it is by a majority vote. However, once I started to tell the rules, I was told that it had to be a 50%+ majority. Next time, someone from my precinct needs to move that it be a simple majority vote. The election time would have been so much faster if we could have done it that way.

I was planning to run for chair again, so I turned the meeting over to Lisa Shepherd. You shouldn't conduct the election for a race you are entering. Keri Witte nominated me. Thanks Keri! That had not been planned ahead of time. To my surprise, no one decided to run against me. Lisa left plenty of time for it and still no one. No speeches for me! I was elected by acclamation.

Next, we voted for vice chair. Evan Frederickson won.

For secretary, Gina Martine was elected by acclamation.

For the first time we are having a precinct committee. They will help with whatever needs to be done. Some of the things will be cleaning up the rolls, while doing a registration drive, later this year, helping candidates when needed, and so on. Our committee members are Mark Holden, Ben Beckes and Steven Reid.

We balloted twice for state delegate. John Liu is now our state delegate.

We had to ballot multiple times for each of our county delegates. Because of a tie after multiple ballots, one of the candidates withdrew, but later won a position. Our county delegates are Steven Reid, Arturo Soza, and Todd Burton.

Due to a misprint we had actually elected a 4th county delegate, but had to remove his name, because we had lost another county delegate. I had to talk to our leg and county and then I talked with him and he was kind and understanding.

The reason we lost delegates is because we had a lower voter turnout for the last state races for governor, attorney general, auditor and treasurer. This is the only time they calculate our precincts votes to determine how many delegates we get for both the state and county. It was heartbreaking to lose those positions. We lost delegates in both. Lesson learned: GO VOTE! Your vote does make a difference in more ways than you might know. Also, when you vote in the next state elections for those 4 previously mentioned races, be sure to cast a vote in all 4 of those races. We are having a governor election this year, but that won't count to change our delegates, because it is a special election and the other positions are not also included.
Overall, it was democracy in action. The room was hot and stuffy. Apparently you needed some code or something to turn the air conditioning on after hours. Balloting took forever. Ok, the balloting didn't take forever, that actually went really fast, it was the discussions that took forever! It was all good though. It was important for the neighbors to ask questions of the candidates and to hear their responses. It was a long meeting (we had to end before 10 p.m. or finish our meeting outside on the lawn - we finished before 10). Despite the late hour and stuff room, I think the general feeling was that people were happy to be part of the process and to help make a difference.