stupor tuesday

Currently listening to Amy Winehouse - Back to Black

Our presidential election process takes way too long. It would be nice if we moved to the Canadian model, where campaigning is only allowed starting 60 days before the election. In any case, I've been sick of all the election business in the media for quite some time, and have been trying to avoid it for the most part. I wasn't aware until Monday that the Minnesota caucuses were to be held yesterday, and as such, hadn't planned on participating. I worked from home the entire day yesterday, so I was pretty restless by late afternoon. Feeling a need to get out and perform my civic duty, I announced that we were going to the Republican caucus.

The Republican caucuses for my precinct were held at one of the middle schools near where we live. There are two middle schools next door to each other. The Democrats caucused at one, and the Republicans at the other. I was surprised to find a long line of people waiting to register when we got in the door. The process was very sloppy--all wards in the precinct were to register at the same small table. Nobody was checking IDs or anything like that. When we finished registering, we found a place to sit at a table, next to one of the wife's friends from church.

After the leader of the evening's activities read several dull letters from Senate, Congress and presidential candidates, we separated out into the various wards in the precinct so that we could elect delegates and alternates, and then do the presidential straw poll. The entire process was extremely disorganized. First of all, most of us were told to go into corners of the cafeteria, so it was very loud. The leader for my ward had never led before and appeared to have not even read the instructions for how to lead the caucus prior to the event, which made the whole thing go very slowly. To make matters worse, he was a very soft-spoken man and everyone had a hard time hearing him.

After delegates and alternates nominated themselves (we had exactly the number needed for our ward so we didn't have to do any voting, thank heaven), it was time to do the straw poll. And, wouldn't you know it, there were neither pencils for people to write with nor enough ballots to go around. We ended up using scraps of paper that had been handed out for the delegate election which ended up not being needed, and wrote in our choice on the paper. I had a paper to write for school and other things to do, so I didn't bother to stick around to hear the results of the poll or to participate in the discussion of the party platform and other topics, which is apparently also part of the caucus process.

I've long felt that our election process had serious flaws and problems, and last night's events only strengthened that belief. Having any kind of serious political process or discourse in such a setting is utterly impossible. Also, it seems like it would be important to check identification to make sure that only eligible citizens are participating.

I don't know that I'll ever attend another caucus. Here's to hoping that Minnesota switches to a regular primary format sometime in the near future.