What did this mean to us? I suppose whether there was a caucus or a primary, we were flooded with annoying phone calls either encouraging us to go to the caucus, reminding us to go to the caucus, telling us why the opponent was so horrible, or something else since we stopped answering the phone. I’m not sure we were fortunate enough to have a “real” person on the other end of the phone line.
We (meaning me) had to research to find out when and where our caucus would be. Last time it was really close by, but this time we had to drive there. It was not easy to figure out and a lot of people had problems with it.
To say they were disorganized would be an understatement. The people running the show didn’t seem to know what they were doing.
Although we could have simply dropped our vote in a box, we decided to go into the meeting room and hear what others had to say. It was a discouraging experience.
Four years ago there was a much larger turnout and it seemed to be better organized. However, everyone for the most part seemed to have forgotten how it could have been run.
The fellow who was running the caucus was reading a booklet of instructions as he was running the meeting. We had forgotten that we could have researched the candidate of our choice and presented something to persuade others.
There was one very organized young couple that had a plan. They were going to educate us. What they didn’t know is that there was to be a time limit for each speaker. We learned something about something (I can’t remember, but it had no bearing on the candidates) before they finally mentioned who they were supporting in the final seconds.
There was anger expressed when someone spoke their mind wearing a shirt with the name of their candidate on it. Apparently they had been roped into help with the check in and it seemed unfair to some. There was yelling and angry words. Wow!
There was nothing constructive said.
Next they had to chose delegates. By this time many people had left. . . many found out they were at the wrong spot. I had no interest in being a delegate. Everyone else became a delegate or a back-up delegate so I left the room for them to work out the details, which were not clear by any means.
Someone came to check and see how things were going. As I wandered around the room, I realized that I could have easily stuffed the ballot box (notice the two boxes). . . you didn’t have to write your name down, just the name of someone. Paper and writing tools were readily available. The person running the show even left me alone in the room. . . .
I found that to be really depressing.
So we did our civic duty, but I’m not sure it was a privilege.
The best part of the experience was . . . no more phone calls.
