For the 2004 election I turned “of age” less than a week before the presidential election so, as you might expect from an underage voter, I didn’t follow any of the preceding primaries/caucuses for either party. This year I’m paying attention, though, and if you’re curious, I’m completely behind Obama.

Today was my local democratic caucus here in the 43rd district of Washington State. How I understand it this is a rather unique year because normally Washington doesn’t matter much but at this point the two candidates (Obama and Hillary) are so close that we actually matter. It makes me feel quite special in an odd normally-ignored-but-finally-noticed-for-once kind of way.

I’m really confused about the whole electoral process after looking into how just the democratic delegate selection process goes. The primaries ballot sent out to all the democrats doesn’t actually elect ANY delegates. Really, none at all. It’s what is described as a 7 million dollar beauty contest paid for by the state” Lovely. (If you agree this is stupid, I’m told it’s likely Sam Reed’s fault.) Instead, all delegates are chosen through the in-person and on-paper caucus system regulated only based on the honor system. Everyone (or at least, encouraged to) meets locally and chooses a number of delegates for their precinct based on the percentages of supporters for each of the candidates.

The location I voted at had I believe 6 precincts represented, one including the majority of the dorms on campus. I’ll just say I’m relieved to not have been in that precinct. Instead, mine was was about 55 people from only 4 square blocks in this area.

The whole event started by announcing the general rules for conducting the caucus then the person managing this location started to list off the precinct numbers being represented. After he got through announcing two of the numbers each group started to clap and cheer as if we were teams competing in some way. Each successive precinct tried to clap louder and louder. I was quite amused. Oh, foolish college kids (I won’t be one for long).

Our leader was a bit unorganized, but oh well — I respect him volunteering either way. We all filled out our choice of candidate on paper sheets then three people tallied up all the votes to make sure all was accurate. We ended up with 44 votes for Obama, 11 for Clinton, and 3 Undecideds. Then, one of the undecideds decided to change his vote to Edwards despite everyone telling him that he had already dropped out of the race. Being the slightly out of touch with the system, we went straight into a selection of volunteers to be primary and alternative delegates to attend the next largest caucus happening in a couple months.

After we began to select volunteers, we went backwards and two people stated their arguments for each candidate and one arguing to send an undecided candidate to be “flexible” and allow the next level of caucus sway our votes one way or another instead of us saying who we wanted (no, I don’t think that makes any sense). We had a perfect number of volunteers for Obama and one too many for Clinton. The solution? “Who want’s to not volunteer for Clinton?” Each group of potential delegates and alternatives worked it out on their own from there. My involvement lasted about two hours.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to get involved this year and I hope that we can all get behind whoever wins (though I would prefer Obama). While I respect Clinton for everything she stands for I can’t help but feel like most of the people voting for her at this stage are doing so based on principle that she’s a woman which is a bit frustrating. I talked with with Adam on this issue which was more the case at his caucus and commented that at least we are quite a bit more in touch with who we’re voting for here. The majority of the country still votes based on instinct and for such superficial (in my opinion) reasons.

Go Obama!