02.09.08
75.8% for Obama - Our WA caucus experience
There were nearly a thousand people crammed into a local elementary school, representing 8 separate precincts holding caucuses at the same location. Our group split off into the library - 101 of us, well above any attendance records in recent memory. Becky was excited that there’s such a nice-looking local school 5 blocks from our house. 
Our precinct had 6 (local level) “delegates” to allocate. After listening to dreary ill-formed liberal party plank propositions for a long 15 minutes while the sign-in votes were tabulated, the first results were 71 Obama, 23 Clinton, 7 undecided. That broke down into 4.2 delegates, 1.37 delegates, and 0.41 delegates. What’s the largest remainder? The .41 delegates of the uncommitted bloc - thus they got the last delegate: 4 Obama, 1 Clinton, 1 Uncommitted. Let this be a lesson in why the caucus system is a terrible, undemocratic idea: representation is skewed every which way by the early aggregation of totals.
So then commenced phase two: short speeches in turn for each candidate. These were made by random people who spoke up, and were pretty much as expected. The Clinton supporter roughly said “She’s experienced, did good things for health care for kids, and I forgive her for her Iraq vote.” The Obama supporter roughly said, “There are 50 extra people in this room because of him. He’s inspiring, nobody hates him, and he’ll do better against McCain.”
After some of that, we had a break for people to switch their votes if they wanted to. Now, rooting for Obama, we were in a precarious mathematical position. If one person switched from uncommitted to Clinton, she’d get an extra delegate. If one person switched from uncommitted to Obama, Clinton would still get an extra delegate! (They’d have the largest remainder - the .41 versus .37 would go the other direction.) Good news for our side, four people and one of the Clinton voters switched to Obama, leaving the final raw vote totals as 76, 22, 3. That’s 4.53, 1.21, and .30 (to the nearest tenth, at least) delegates respectively. Can you see the biggest remainder? Final delegate count: Obama 5, Clinton 1.
Most of the room cheered the change in the final delegate allocation, of course. I’m now the 5th alternate delegate for our precinct to the congressional-district level caucus. Ew, more policy bickering! Anyway, I’ll let you know what that’s like on the off-chance that I have to go. Cheers.
