Tuesday, March 03, 2009

A brief primer on the Caucus process

I just realized that not all of you who read this are old hacks like me and may not have an understanding of the process, so, here we go.
When you get to Airways Middle School between 9 and 10:45 AM (you HAVE to at least be in line at 10:45, or you can't register), go and find your state House District. You don't know? What the hell? OK, before you go, go HERE to find your precinct, and all of your districts for voting. You want your State House District (83-99, except 94, that's Fayette County) and then go to that table.
There, you will sign a loyalty oath (if you're going to be a Democrat, you have to agree to support the party, right?) and then sign the list BY PRECINCT (which you should have found above, right?) Ok, then, go out into the auditorium and sit with everyone else in your House District. Sometime after 11 AM, there will be a few speeches by elected officials, which gives the Credentials Committee time to get the district packets ready.
Then, about 11:30, you will break off into districts and each district chair will talk to you and break you up by precinct. Each precinct is allowed so many delegates to the Convention on March 28 (hey, we're a big county, it's a two-tier process, ok?) and there will be elections for delegate and alternate, unless there are fewer people than delegate spots in your precinct, at which time YOU'RE ALL ELECTED! W00T!
Hey, wait??? What about the Chair elections??? Silly, that's for the Convention, which you'll have to come back to Airways for on March 28, unless you lose a delegate election or can't come back. At THAT time, the delegates elected Saturday will then vote to elect Executive Committee members for each House District, who will then, in turn, elect a new chair at the end of the Convention.
if you're a delegate, you will be contacted over the following three weeks by the candidates for ExecCom seeking your support. Ask them whom they are supporting for Chair and why. Make them convince you why you should support their Chair candidate and them. Ask them what they plan to do in your House district to build the party and make it more responsive to the people. Make them WORK for it, in short.
Have fun!

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