Can any of you veterans help this greenhorn with the rules re: caucuses for 3/4?

[moc]

I have never voted in the primaries before, but I really want to caucus for Obama. I've been trying to find out how to go about it, but I haven't been successful in getting any concrete information. Here's what I've tried so far:

-I attended a Collin County organizational meeting for Obama on 2/8 and filled out a volunteer form. I couldn't stay for the whole thing because I had a child with the flu at home. I haven't heard from them yet.

-I received an automated email from Texans for Obama asking me to sign up as a precinct captain. I replied to the email saying that I didn't think I should because (1) I've never voted in a primary; (2) I will be out of town during the day on 3/4 and didn't know what obligations a precinct captain would have during the day; and (3) My husband works most evenings (no, it's not just Hillary supporters who may have conflicts with the caucus system - dh is a self employed therapist so if he doesn't work, he doesn't get paid; still not sure if he can afford to take off and caucus with me). So, as a result, I will have two school age children with me at the caucus - a self-sufficient 11yo and a wild 5yo. Therefore, being in charge of anything with 5yo "wild man" in tow is probably not a good idea. Anyway, I haven't received any reply from Texans for Obama either.

-From the Obama website, I found a caucus training in Dallas scheduled for Monday nights. I emailed the coordinator to see if there was another opportunity to train since Monday nights aren't good for me because of the aforementioned childcare issues and a regular Monday night conflict with dd's volleyball skills class that I need to transport her to. I have not received a reply to this email.

-I emailed the Collin County Dems with questions on how to caucus but have not received a reply.

I figured at this point, I should just show up at Obama's DFW campaign headquarters, but I haven't seen any announcements as to when a DFW HQ is scheduled to open. Does anyone know when/where that will happen?

Any advice/help is very appreciated. Speaking as someone who cast her first vote for Carter in 1980 (while a freshman on the very conservative A&M campus) and who was living in very blue Maryland during the 1992 and 96 elections, I'm excited to be able to vote in an election where I'm truly excited about my candidate and when my vote has a real chance of making a difference.

Thanks in advance.

:hi:

[sonias]

1. Texas Two-Step

Anyone can absolutely be a PCT captain. No experience necessary. The only qualification you need is to have voted in the Democratic primary. All you need to do is be willing to help other people. But since I see you will be out of town on March the 4th, you can't be part of the caucus at all. I'm sorry to hear that. You must be present to at least sign in - that's your first vote in a caucus.

The caucuses happen at the same location you vote in at your precinct on election day at 7:15 after the polls close. So if you vote early, you go back to your precinct voting location and there will be people caucusing there - for both parties. So make sure you end up in the right one. Ask the people milling around where the Democratic caucus is in your PCT.

Best source of information right here
http://www.burntorangereport.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4877}">Everything You Need To Know About the Texas Delegate Process, Part 1 (BOR diary)
Everything You Need To Know About the Texas Delegate Process, Part 2(BOR diary)

There are a few other good links at the Burnt Orange Report blog - linked in the upper right hand corner, permanently until the primary election. That's where the two links above came from.

Sonia

[moc]

2. Thanks so much, Sonia. Actually, I should be back in town in plenty

of time to caucus. I have a meeting in Tyler that is scheduled from 10 a.m. to about 1:30 p.m., so I assume I'll be back in town by 4:30 at the latest. I have to pick up ds from school (down in the medical center), so given traffic, I should be home in my precinct by 5:30 or 6pm. I thought I'd vote during early voting to avoid the hassle of taking 5yo wild man to the polls with me Tuesday afternoon and because I assume I'll have to leave home too early to vote when the polls open. I know our voting location is our elementary school, so I figured I would just show up there around 7pm to make sure to be there for the caucus, right? And, is it okay to have two kids in tow? Depending on how long the caucus lasts, I could conceivably leave 11yo dd in charge of 5yo ds. However, I'm not comfortable with them being alone for more than an hour.

I'm in Collin County, precinct 55, by the way. We're the southern most part of Collin County, technically in the city of Richardson rather than Plano.

Thanks again!

:hi:

[sonias]

4. Go to your caucus even if you can't stay

moc, even if all you can do is show up and sign in for Obama, that helps. That's a vote. Based on the number of people that sign in for a candidate, the remainder of the people that can stay, have that voting strength. If you want to move up as a delegate i.e. to county, state and national, then you need to stay. But if you just want to vote for Obama. The simple act of showing up and signing in for him is a huge help.

Some of these caucuses are short, some long. It depends how contentious your PCT is going to be. In ours for example, the thing that took the absolute longest used to be reading all the resolutions and voting for them individually. Now each of us reads them at the beginning and then when we vote for them we vote for them all at once, unless anyone objects. Usually for the sake of unity, they all get passed in our PCT.

Then the only thing left to do is vote for who moves on to the county caucuses. And that's done by presidential preference. So that's why it is important for those initial signatures showing preference. If 10 people signed in for Obama, but only two Obama people stayed until the end, those two people are voting for 10 people, they get the proxies of all the voters in essence. They vote a 10 person block together.

Good luck to you at your caucus, have fun!

Sonia

[TexasThoughtCriminal]

6. Don't assume your polling place is the usual location

Don't assume your polling place is the elementary school at which you are used to voting. Remember, this is a primary and voting sites are often combined (more likely where Dems are the minority) and you don't want to take the chance of showing up at the wrong place. Look up where your precinct votes in the newspaper or the Collin County elections dept website. 7:15 on election night is the wrong time to try to find out where your precinct dems are.

[moc]

9. Thanks, TTC. I checked Collin County elections website, and it says

that the elementary school is still the polling place. I may call and confirm just to be on the safeside. The school is under renovation construction right now, so I hope that doesn't change things up.

[houstontxdem]

8. Early voting locations and times for Collin County

Here is the website for all of the early voting locations and times for Collin County!
http://www.collincountytx.gov/elections/election_information/2008/030408/EV030408.html

[moc]

10. Thanks so much! Good luck in Houston!

[sonias]

3. I misread your post

I though you said you would be out of town on March 4th, but now I see that it's only during the day. If you're going to be home by the evening i.e. by 7:00 p.m. then you can caucus for Obama. Just make sure you early vote, since you won't be in town during the election day of March the 4th.

Take your kids. It's like a town hall meeting. Kids are allowed. They don't get to vote, but they might think the whole thing is fun. If you think they may get bored then take activities for them to work on, books etc. I would make it a project for them. Tell them they should write a report about it for a school project. It might make it more fun for them. They'll be reporters for that night.

Any opening of a Fort Worth HQ for the Obama Campaign will be announced on the Texans for Obama site here
http://blog.texansforobama.com/

:hi:

Sonia

[moc]

5. Thank you, Sonia, for your very helpful information.

It's good to hear you don't have to stay in order to cast a caucus vote for Obama. Perhaps dh can arrange his schedule so that he can run over and sign in and then go back to work.

This is all very exciting! Thank you!

Margaret

[sonias]

7. Absoltuely have him sign in if he can

These caucuses get started pretty much on time so even if he only has fifteen minutes, the act of signing in with a preference for your candidate counts.

In fact that's what you would be doing as a PCT captain for Obama. You're making calls to your neighbors to tell them the importance of a caucus, and that they can come by and vote, even if it's only to sign in and vote by stating preference. It's that simple. I'm making calls already. This is all done in advance. We call it GOTC - Get Out the Caucus (vote).

Now for the more interested people who want to go on to the county convention, the state convention and the national convention - you have to stay and compete. These are very highly coveted positions and they get more and more competitive as the process moves along.

I'm making the math easy, just for this example. Which reminds me, take a calculator or a laptop. The math may not be that easy. You do have to round up sometimes, because you can't send half a person to be a delegate.
:rofl:

The numbers of delegates you send to the county will be in your PCT packages. Those numbers are based on your voting turnout from 2004. Your county party creates a PCT convention caucus package that gets delivered to each voting location. There will be some brief instructions, but more than likely whoever is the PCT chair for your PCT will take initial control of the caucus. Then you elect a convention chair and secretary that can be totally different from your PCT chair. The newly election convention chair runs the rest of the caucus meeting.

Lets say your PCT gets 12 delegates allocated to them for county convention. Lets say 36 people show up to your PCT convention and they all want to move on up. Well 24 of them aren't going to make it. The 12 people that move on up, will be determined by the voting strength of the presidential preference.

If 24 of the 36 people signed in for Obama, the Obama people control two thirds of the voting strength, which means Obama gets 8 delegates and Hillary gets 4.
24 divided by 36 = .66666 or 2/3
12 x .6666 = 7.99 or rounded up 8

Then the caucus just votes for who the 12 delegates are. The Obama group in the example above would determine who their 8 people are, and the Hillary group would determine who their 4 people are. We usually move to different corners to do our voting.

It doesn't matter that some of the people that signed in and left the caucus. Each camp gets those delegate numbers based on the sign in sheets. So if you had 24 people sign in for Obama and only 8 stayed. Well hallelujah you all get to move on without any more voting because you get 8 allocations and all of you want to go.

Then you come back together to write down the names and addresses of the newly elected delegates.

The convention secretary has to record all this on forms that are provided and turned in to the party. Thats how you get your county credentials.

That also brings up another situation, and I had this happen to me last caucus. We had more delegates allocated to us than we had people who wanted to go to the convention, so you can make calls after the caucus and see if any of the people who came and left want to go to the county convention. You have a certain number of days before you have to turn in your paperwork, so the convention secretary working with the convention chair can try to fill out their delegation. So being convention secretary is also a good position.

This gets repeated at the county level but at a much bigger process since at the county convention you vote by Senate Districts and they are much, much larger.

So that just gives you and idea that making it all the way to be a national delegate is a very time intensive process. It's just like running for an election. You have to campaign for it because so many people want to go to Denver and there are so few official delegate slots.


Sonia

[moc]

11. Wow, I'm glad I teach statistics. It sounds like having good math skills

is going to be a plus, lol.

I have have convinced dh to take the night off from work so he can be precinct captain for Obama. He'd be great! :bounce:

Thanks again for all your help!

:hug:

[sonias]

12. Awesome news!

Tell him I said thank you for doing your part for Obama. :yourock: :patriot:

Another trick for organizing that day, if he's going to be off all day, is hang around the precinct voting location. Stay the required 100 feet way from the polling place, but add something to your Obama sign like -PCT Caucus tonight for Obama - Ask me how. Then people you may have missed calling can come to him and ask questions. You might have some pre-printed materials about where to show up at 7:15 and how they absolutely have to at least show up and sign in for Obama. Every little bit helps.


Sonia