Iowa MUST Change it's Democratic Caucus Process or, How Barack Obama won in my precinct

I've been thinking, wondering and debating whether or not I should post this, as I know it won't make a darn bit of difference in the world, but something in me has to find a way to publicize what happened in my precinct on the night of the Iowa Caucuses. I really want Mr. Obama to hear about this...but I know it's silly to think that he will.

You all knew that I was being wooed by the Hillary campaign, and I might as well tell you that I did go to the caucuses to be counted in her corner. I'd never been to a Caucus before, so it was a new experience for me, and I actually relished the chance to experience it. In hindsight, I wish I never would have gone and seen what this antiquated method of politics was all about. It was singularly the most appalling thing that I've ever seen that could directly effect my future.

As usual, my clerk that was to relieve me at work was late by about a half an hour the night of the caucus. I was still able to make it to the site in plenty of time to be counted though, so it's no biggie, even though I did arrive much more stressed than I normally would have. After taking care of all the paperwork and pleasantries, I positioned myself on the side of the auditorium where the other Clinton supporters were located. After a while, I began talking to the guy who was in charge of our section, and I volunteered to do all of the counting for the Clinton corner. Cool for me! I get to actually do something important that might make a difference in the world!

After we all got settled, they took a count of everyone registered to vote in the room. We started with 118 people. We had 32 for Hillary at the start, and I don't know what the others had. You needed 18 people in your camp for your candidate to be considered viable, which we easily accomplished. It turned out that in our precint, Bill Richardson and Dennis Kucinich (sp?) turned out to not be viable candidates. Since they weren't viable, the other groups had to do whatever they could to convince these folks to move over and support the candidates that were considered viable--within a one hour period of time. Easy enough to understand eh? Well, the Obama folks had another trick up their sleeves other than just trying to convince the inviable to move to their camp! By using intimidation and scare tatics, the Obama supporters were successfully able to scare off two of the Hillary supporters, making them leave the caucus site-and the votes for Hillary-altogether!

Lets face it folks...when you have two or three large black women screaming not so nice things at little old blue haired ladies across a school auditorium for absolutely no other reason than politics, one can't consider it to be anything other than an intimidation tactic--and I was absolutely horrified to see that our election system could be influenced by methods such as this. This is the way that the mob got people elected back in the 20's and 30's for petes sake! This couldn't possibly be happening in my precinct at my first caucus??? Wow. The whole thing really pissed me off.

Aside from the two ladies from the Clinton camp, one of the ladies who was there to support Bill Richardson absolutely refused to join with any other group, so she took off. One of the John Edwards supporters had something he needed to get done at home, so he left during the half hour of democratic party news that had to be forced upon unwary caucus goers before we could actually count each other, so that left 114 people in the room that were eligible to be counted in our precinct on caucus night.

After the hour of endless banter attempting to get the people who wound up with unviable candidates to support a candidate that they really didn't want or like, we had been successful in pulling in only 4 people from the Richardson camp. We gained one of the two Kucinich supporters as well...not too bad when you added that The person in Charge of this mess was also a Hillary supporter that I had not previously counted into the Hillary numbers. So heres is a breakdown of how it all worked out that night:

We started with 30 Hillary Clinton supporters
We lost two to scare tactics, which left us with 28 people remaining
We gained 5 from other candidates, giving us 33 supporters for Hillary
We had the Democrat who lead the caucus giving us 1 more for a total of: 34 Votes for Hillary

Grrrrrr.

Our precinct had 5 delegates total and it took 18 people to be awarded one delegate. We desperately tried to get double that amount, or 36 people, so that we could have a second delegate awarded to Hillary. Unfortunately because of the two people that were scared off, we came up two people short of the second delegate. Very very aggravating!

Here's how the tally's came in--pay attention to the numbers, please.

45 people for John Edwards
38 People for Barack Obama
34 People for Hillary Clinton

Now...that adds up to 117 people. How in the heck did that happen, and better question is "WHY" did it happen? There were only 114 eligible voters in the room when it came time to be counted, so it shoudn't be possible...except...

The democratic party allowed non eligible people to sit in amongst the eligible voters. This MAY have caused some counting discrepencies. Why didn't the party chair at the precinct make these people that weren't eligible move out of the room during the final tally? I don't know and I'm afraid to speculate on the subject.

To summarize this rant--yeah, I'm upset because my candidate lost, but do you know what? I'm more upset with the fraudulant practices that lead up to my candidates loss than by the fact that she lost. I'm curious just how many other precincts saw this kind of behavior here in Iowa? Any voting process that can allow people to be influenced by intimidation tactics and then allow those who used them to steal those lost votes and add them to their own candidates final tally absolutely makes me nauseous. It leads me to believe that the Iowa Democratic Caucus system is just too antiquated to be a viable method of conducting a primary election in the 21st Century in the United States of America, where everyone is supposed to have the right to stand up and be counted!

I'm really glad that you were happy with your win here Mr. Obama. In my book, Mr. John Edwards is the man who really took Iowa that night. Your team should have been disqualified.