First Door on the Left

I have been home from my precinct caucus here in Dallas for a little over 30 minutes. I wanted to kind of collect my thoughts before I recorded them.

My thoughts: This system sucks.

Really. The Democratic party in Texas needs to rethink this whole process.

Our caucus, though scheduled to begin at 7:15 p.m., did not actually begin until 8:30 p.m. There was still a very long line waiting to vote when the polls closed at 7:00 p.m. and we had to wait for the last person in that line to cast their ballot.

When we did finally begin, the elementary school cafeteria in which we were meeting was so overcrowded that we had to split into two groups. Half stayed in the cafeteria, the other half moved to the auditorium. Then the sign in process began… one person at a time signing the sheet with name, voter certificate number, telephone number, gender, ethnicity, and presidential preference. As far as I know, the caucus is still going on. I, like most people, gave up and left after I was finally able to sign the sheet and cast my vote for my preferred candidate.

It was noisy. It was crowded. It was disorganized. It was something for which the Texas Democratic party should be ashamed. Confidence in the results of a process such as I witnessed this evening should be very, very low.

As far as I could tell (and believe me, it was difficult to tell), our precinct was split about 50/50 between Obama and Clinton.

Tags: 2008, Democrats, presidential election, Texas