I travel around a lot for work -- I'm a native of Oregon, lived in Nevada last year, and moved here to Seattle last November. Today I walked the 2 blocks to my local precinct to go caucus for my candidate. I left my house at 12:45 because I wanted to get there a little early as I had to register to vote in Washington. My local precinct holds its caucus in this apartment building here on Capital Hill (on "Republican Street" -- no kidding!), and boy was I shocked to see the line of fellow Democrats going out the door, across the alley and down the street TO THE NEXT BLOCK, all waiting their turn to sign in and begin the caucus process.
Now I need to disclose that my candidate of choice is Barack Obama. I also need to tell the HRC fans that, should she win the nomination, of course I'll stand with her and vigorously support her candidacy for president. It's just that I'm really turned on by the Obama campaign and his fresh approach and youth and vigor. I think he'll have broad appeal to both independents as well as to our Republican friends. That's the main reason why I support his campaign and why I felt compelled to go and caucus with my fellow Obama supporters today.
So -- I entered the extremely overcrowded apartment building recreation room and found the lady with the clipboard to register to vote.
Keep in mind: I'm an Oregonian (and will be again, hopefully, after I finish this work/project up here in Seattle at the end of this year) and we vote for everything by mail. It's kinda weird seeing a polling place and to watch the cumbersome process of having to stand in line and check in. I REALLY prefer voting by mail, and I think that we got that right on the mark down in Oregon.
But I digress -- back to my experience: After I registered to vote I went to the next table where I checked in. I filled out my name, address and candidate preference. Now this last part is key and it is the reason why I'm here writing about this experience so early after the caucus opened. After we were signed in, this other lady "in charge" stood up and announced that "if you signed in and indicated your preference for a candidate and you won't be wanting to negotiate or change your candidate preference later, you may leave and your preference will be counted". Since there were 3 precincts being represented in this one room, and since there were WELL over 200 people standing in the room standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and since I really didn't want to stand in such a crowded area -- I left.
Now my observation: Remember that sheet I mentioned above that I filled out and indicated my preference? There were 4 of these spread across the table, with room for 4 names on each sheet. EVERY SHEET I SAW HAD THE SIGNED-IN PERSON'S NAME INDICATING HIS/HER PREFERENCE FOR OBAMA! Granted, Capital Hill's demographic is more Generation "X" and "Y", but still: could this be an indication of a landslide for Obama?
Thanks for reading this! Wow! Caucus was kinda fun!