Precinct 328 Story

My wife and I went to the voting location last night at 7:30 in an attempt to find the Republican Precinct meeting. The voting location was at the Renaissance Retirement community center, nestled in the midst of apartment complexes off of Jollyville Road. When we got there at 7:30, we found people parked in the streets, up and down the road, and walking up to 5 blocks to get to the voting location.

As it turned out, all of those folks were Democrat voters who wanted to caucus for their candidate. While it is great to see voter participation, this turned into a logistical nightmare. The manager of the retirement center asked all the Democrats to caucus in the parking lot as there were 650 Democrats in attendance last night and the retirement center was in violation of the fire code to have that many people inside the building. After all the Democrats left the building, there were 32 of us lonely Republicans left in the polling place, 8 of whom left after signing in.

In the process of the mele, the election judge took the voter data list, leaving us without a way to vet candidates except by affidavit and the stamps on our respective voter registration cards. The election judge said, "You mean the Republicans are caucusing today, too? I didn't think your election was today."

In the process of listening to Democrat activists yelling at each other in the parking lot, we were arguing over Roberts' Rules of Order over how to credential the Republicans in the room. When it was all said and done, Precinct 328 had 27 available delegate slots to the Senatorial Caucus and we sent 19 delegates.

After the caucuses were done, I asked the Democrat Precinct Chairman who won their caucus, Hillary or Obama. As of 10:30, he still did not know who won. They had so many Democrats to credential and so many votes to count that they were not 100% sure who won the caucus. This is the same Democrat Precinct Chairman who held the Democrat Precinct Caucus by himself, with no other Democrats in attendance, in 2006.

The record turn out should not be encouraging to Republicans.