 |
| Herman signing up to be a delegate |
Herman has been a big Romney guy since before 2008. He worked as a volunteer for his campaign in the last election, and he volunteered again for him in this one. He has taken our older kids up to the Iowa straw poll last summer and to the Iowa caucuses a few months ago. He feels very strongly about Romney, so he really wanted to make sure that Romney got representation from our caucus group. He made sure that we showed up early so that we would be sure to participate today. When we arrived, after proving that we were registered voters in the county we were able to take our seats. I headed for the seats right away, but Herman made the rounds, greeting people and talking about what to expect. That man is such a politician. He's a natural at it -- a polar opposite of me in that regard. He seems to know everyone, even the people he doesn't actually know. He just has a way of talking with people as if he's known them forever. As he made the rounds he discovered that there was a place for him to sign up if he wished to be a delegate, so he headed there and made his wish known. Apparently they already had him listed. I don't know how that happened since he isn't really active in local Republican politics. He's on the school board, but that isn't a party affiliated position, so maybe they saw his interest through facebook. Who knows?
After a bit of waiting 10:00 arrived, so it was time to start the caucus. The rule was that a person had to arrive before 10 am in order to be eligible to participate in the caucus. The doors would be locked at that time and all others would be turned away. Apparently the sheriff had trouble getting the doors locked, so several people made it to the assembly but were told that their votes would not count. That caused them to leave right away. I understand the need for rules. I do. But it just seemed a shame to me that there were people who took the trouble to come by today to have their voices heard, and because of a delay they didn't get that chance. I just thought that there was a good chance that those people who were turned away would be highly unlikely to participate in something like this in the future. And that is a shame when something happens that makes people less likely to participate in a democracy.
After the assembly settled down it was time to get down to business, and the first items of business were to choose our chairperson, secretary, and parliamentarian. This was not something that I was expecting at all. It seemed like it wasn't that big of a deal. I mean, who cares who calls the meeting to order or takes notes? But I came to see that those choices were pretty important to the way that the rest of the meeting flowed. The only person put forward as chair was the guy who was already running the show here. There was only one name put forward as parliamentarian. There was a bit of a contest for secretary between the current prosecuting attorney and a lesser known woman who was a Paul supporter. The PA won. There was no debate or chance for the candidates to express why they wanted the job. It was just voted on without question. Like I said, I wasn't totally concerned with who would win these positions because I thought it didn't matter all that much. But then, in my opinion at least, things got a bit wonky. The chair immediately listed off a group of names for people he appointed to a nominating and a rules committee. He didn't even take one second to ponder this. He had obviously come today with that list already decided. These people knew they would be on these committees. There was no discussion about why these people should be on the committee or not. They just were.
I have to take a second to talk about the makeup of our group today -- at least what my unknowing eyes perceived it to be. There was a large Ron Paul group of supporters. They were obviously well organized, holding folders that explained what the caucus process would be like. These supporters, for the most part, seemed to be relatively new to the political process. Many of them had not ever been in a caucus before. Most of them did not hold any local political office. They were there to support the candidate they preferred. If I had to guess, I would say that in our group of 79 voters (that's right, only 79 people showed up today in our county) at least 40% were Paul people. For the longest time Herman thought that he was the only Romney guy there, but as the process continued during the day it seemed that maybe 15 - 20% of the people were for Romney. There were also another 15 - 20% for Santorum and then a handful of people for Gingrich. So if I were an outsider (and most of the time I felt like one) I would have guessed that a large number of our delegates would be representing Ron Paul. Just wait to see how things turned out.
The caucusing for candidates did not start right away. First we had to see if we wanted to read the state convention rules for caucuses. The secretary made a big deal about holding up the rules which were several pages long, showing us that it was going to take a long time to read through them. No one wanted to sit through that. We wanted to vote for our candidates and get this show on the road. In retrospect, it might have been worth our time to review those rules. One man wanted for us to read one particular section out of that rule paper. After it was read I'm still not sure why he wanted it read, but it was important to him for some reason. But here is the thing that was so frustrating about this assembly. They said at the beginning that they would be observing Roberts Rules of Order. I get the need for order in meetings. I really do. But that works wonderfully if you have a whole group of people who understand exactly what those rules are and how to work within those rules to get their voices heard. Unfortunately it is a truth that many people in this world go their entire lives without ever having to be in a meeting conducted in this way, so they have no idea how it works. And when you have a group where only a few people truly understand that system, it is easy for those people to manipulate the meeting in such a way to suppress some of the voices. In the case of this man I witnessed the beginning of the frustration with trying to work within these "rules." He had a devil of a time just trying to get this one little piece of business amended. Eventually it was, the section was read, and we moved on. Sort of.
At this point the rules committee left for some other part of the building to do something. I still have no idea what they were doing, but I assume it had something to do with the rules. But they were gone FOREVER. The rest of us just hung around until they returned. To be honest, this was probably my favorite time during the caucus. As we sat around we started talking to one another. Herman feels passionately about Romney. We were sitting next to a couple of soldiers who were big Paul supporters, and there was another man who wanted a conservative alternative to Romney, but who hadn't committed to anyone yet. As we sat together we talked to each other about the candidates we supported and why (well, I just sat and listened, but it was still nice). Everyone had great reasons for the person they were voting for, and we were able to discuss that preference in a calm and reasonable manner. I could see value in what each person spoke of. That is what I expected this process to be like -- all of us getting together to talk about why a particular candidate should be represented by our county. Unfortunately, that only took place when the meeting wasn't taking place.
The chair did take time during our wait to start explaining what the Republican party stood for. That had to be my least favorite part of the meeting because this man, although he is entitled to his opinion, was not expressing the opinions of all Republicans. He did eventually point this out, after at least ten minutes of exposition on the subject. But I swear, when he started talking about birth control I thought I was going to gouge my eyes out. I was steaming angry, but for the sake of my sweet hubby I held my tongue, realizing that this was not any official part of the meeting. I could save my hypocrisy ranting for another time. This was simply one man's opinion -- one I heartily disagree with. But I digress.
After what seemed like forever the rules committee returned and the meeting continued. Now it was time to get the show on the road and vote for our people. First, however, the real battles of the caucus were about to begin. There was concern about what we were voting on. We were told that we would be voting on a slate of people to attend the district level and then state level conventions (I think they were called conventions.). The assembly wondered if we were going to vote for a group who would be voting for one candidate or if each representative would get to vote for who they chose on their own. After a vote on this it was decided that each candidate would be voting individually. Then the question was raised as to if the candidates would be bound to vote one way without opportunity to switch their vote. The debate on this took forever, with several people wanting to talk about this. The "rules" were supposed to be followed, but it seemed as if it was only followed minimally with constant questions as to if people were raising points of order, motions, or whatever. Who knows? I just wanted there to be free discussion of the issue since it was so important to those who were attending. At the end of this lengthy debate it was decided that people who wanted to be delegates needed to publicly declare their candidate of choice so that people could know who was on the slate they presented. So fine. They went through the list of candidates, and each person declared their candidate. As the candidates declared their candidate of choice it was clear that it was a pretty good representation of the group assembled today. Plenty of Paul people, plenty of Romney people, plenty of Santorum people, and then a couple of Gingrich people. It seemed representative. But here is where things got dicey.
Apparently the nominating committee put together three "slates" of candidates. Each slate held fourteen names. How these names were put together was a mystery to me. The committee did not know the preferred candidates of these people ahead of time, so it was not put together according to candidate preference. Maybe it was in order of signup. I just don't know. The strange thing was that several people were on all of the slates, guaranteeing that they would be chosen. Most of these people were those who were running this caucus today, and their names had been preprinted on the form. Like I said before, Herman was one of those people. Now I love him dearly, and I'm happy that he will have the chance to support the candidate of his choice, but the reality is that it made no sense why he was on all of the slates, but some people were not. After these slates were presented they pointed out who the candidates would be voting for. There were an entire group of people who had not signed up to be a delegate as they came in since they didn't even know that was an option, so they were unhappy that they had not been included on any slate. They gave these people a chance to form another slate. So everyone came forward and signed up for a fourth slate. These people were not organized to work together at all, so there was a little bit of everything in it, but there was no organized group to help their group get chosen.
 |
| People checking out the choices for "slates" |
Of the four slates the first one had a good representation from each candidate other than Gingrich. The second one had some Gingrich representation unlike the others. The third one was primarily Romney and Santorum with no Paul representation, and the fourth one was a hodge podge of candidate representatives with many people who were not the leaders of the local party.
When the vote was counted it ended up that the third slate got the most votes -- not a majority, but a plurality. Therefore of our fourteen slots Romney got six votes, Santorum five, and three people were unaffiliated. There was not one single Paul representative even though a good number of the people there were Paul supporters. They were incensed. Okay. But there was still hope for them. We had only voted on a slate for the first meeting. We still could choose another for the second meeting. However, before we had really gotten comfortable in our seats after the shock of the Paul people being shut out, a man yelled out a motion to have the same slate go to both meetings. That was quickly seconded and thrown to a vote. We didn't discuss it at all. It was just a vote. Therefore Paul people did not even get a chance to express their concern about being shut out, giving the entire group the opportunity to give them a shot at going to the state meeting. The vote was close, but the motion stood, therefore sending a Paul-less representation to the next levels of conventions. Well, now the Paul people were seriously ticked off. One man stood up to voice his concern. He explained that he felt as if he got the shaft after making the effort to show up to have his voice heard. Time and time again the people running the show went back to parliamentary rules and said that if he had any concerns he should have made them two hours earlier at the beginning of the meeting. Maybe that is technically true according to "Roberts Rules" but the reality is that something that should have been very straight forward was incredibly confusing to those of us who had never done this before. So although we had shown up today to take part in our democracy, effectively a large group of us were shut out. Now I am happy that Herman got the chance to vote for Romney as a delegate, but both of us saw the inherent wrong in how the slates were chosen. Why is it that the established politicians get to have more pull over the process than an ordinary group of citizens who arrive and want to participate? Why was the group of slates set up in such a way that certain members of the local party were guaranteed to go no matter what, when less entrenched members of the party just had to trust the luck of the draw? I don't know. I can understand a bit of both sides of the story, but just as an observer for the most part I have to say that it did not seem like any example of what a good democracy should be. I had always thought that the best place to make our voices heard in our democracy was at the local level because we have the opportunity to actually meet together face to face in order to express our views to a living breathing human being. But today I seemed to see that it can be just as difficult to have your opinions count when trying to break into a local process. It was a huge disappointment to me. I felt very sorry for those Ron Paul people who had put a good amount of effort into getting a large group together to vote today. Unfortunately it seems as if the complicated nature of the rules made it difficult for those people to get the representation they desired. Of course all of us had the same opportunity to figure all of these rules and the process out ahead of time, but should this part of democracy be simple enough for anybody to arrive at today and understand without confusion? It seems as if this should be the case, but even for a semi political junkie like myself the rules were not very clear for an unseasoned person.
The Paul people were not allowed to change the decisions of the group at all, so they all left the meeting en masse. One of the men was very visibly upset and gave his mind to some of the local party leaders as he walked out. Herman and I left at that time as well -- not really because we were protesting, but mostly because they were getting ready to create their suggestions for a party platform, and my wise husband knew that I would probably explode in the midst of this discussion, so we headed home. I started the day super excited to see an example of democracy in action, and unfortunately I left the day feeling as if I had witnessed another example of the actions of our political parties that disenchants so many ordinary people from taking the time to take part in the process. At a certain point when you feel as if your opinion is not being heard, you just stop talking, and that is a true tragedy for our democracy.
No comments:
Post a Comment