Primary & Caucus Voting In Texas

In Texas Republicans control the voting process so of course they are going to make things as difficult as possible for Democrats to cast their votes.

I did early voting in the Democratic Primary. When I got to the voting place I found that there were 25 voting booths for Republicans and only 5 for Democrats. There were no Republicans voting. Not one single Republican was voting. There was of course a line of Democrats waiting for a Democratic voting booth to open.

I cast my vote for Obama.

On Tuesday I went to a different voting place to caucus for Obama. Yes in

Texas you vote in the primary in one place and caucus in a completely different place. This was designed by the Republicans running the election so that there would be as much confusion as possible and there was. I went early and was one of the first 10 people in line. The Republicans running the elections deliberately delayed the start of the caucus. They had Sheriff Deputies blocking two large glass doors and the Republican officials were clearly in view. They sat around eating deli food and cookies. They looked out the large glass doors and openly laughed at us waiting outside.

More then an hour of this passed before people began shouting “let us vote, let us vote”. More Sheriff Deputies showed up and split the crowd into three lines. The Republicans running the election had set it up so that two different precincts would caucus in the same small space.

There were around 1,000 people waiting to causes. There sere around 600 from one precinct and there were around 400 from my precinct. For the precinct that had 600 people show up there was only one very old man to handle the voting process. For my precinct there were 3 people taking care of business. Keep in mind I was among the first 10 people in line and it took over an hour to finally make it to the precinct table to cast my vote because the voting officials kept taking people from only one line and forgot about the line I was in.

I presented my stamped voting card and ID to the official at the table and was told to fill in my information on a form. The form had been copied using a fax machine because the election officials did not provide enough multipart official forms to handle the large crowd. The form had room for 20 people to cast their vote and there were just a few names on the page. Two women came over to the table and distracted the official for 7 to 10 minutes. The whole time this voting official was holding my voting card and ID and chitchatting with the two ladies and I realized that I could fill in the remaining voting places with made up information and get away with it. I didn’t do that but I could have and I would have gotten away with it.

The caucus voting was just the first part of the process but the second part was voluntary so most people just left after casting their caucus vote. I wanted to participate in the complete process so I waited until every person in our precinct voted. While I was waiting I noticed that a few people were casting their vote then getting back in line and casting their vote again. It was then that I realized that since there were so many people and the voting officials were not really paying attention to what people were writing on the forms that anyone could vote multiple times and get away with it.

At this point I would like to point out that I live in a mostly white suburb of Houston. The largest minority group in my neighborhood is Hispanic followed by Blacks and Asians. I was the only white man that voted in the caucus in my precinct. There was one white woman. There was also one Asian man. The rest were mostly black women with a few black men. What exactly does this say? Why in a mostly white precinct was I one of only two white people to vote? Why were there no Hispanics? Asians? I believe it is because in Texas whites hate everyone that is not white, Hispanics hate blacks and Asians hate blacks and most of the whites, Hispanics and Asians are going to vote Republican anyway.

After all the votes had been cast the real caucus began. It mostly amounted to counting the vote. The votes were counted by hand and verified by the handful of people that stayed for part two. My precinct awarded Clinton 8 delegates and Obama 17. The next part was the election of the delegates that would go on to the Senatorial convention. There was only one Clinton voter that participated in part two of the caucus process so she by default was elected to represent the 8 delegate votes that were awarded to Clinton. There were 16 Obama voters that participated in part two so by default we were all elected to represent Obama.

After the election of delegates motions were made for items to be added to the Democratic platform. One was for increased spending on education which passed unanimously and one was to end the death penalty. Now keep in mind that we have 24 elected delegates all democrats with 22 being black women, one white man and one Asian man voting on this death penalty motion. The vote split with 11 voting for keeping the death penalty, 12 voting for doing away with the death penalty and one abstaining. I was surprised by the outcome of the vote. I, the only white man, was the only person keeping the motion to end the death penalty in Texas alive in my precinct.

I are now an Obama delegate and will be participating in the Democratic Senatorial Convention for Harris County then on to the Democratic State Convention in Austin and then on to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

The one thing I am looking forward to the most besides participating in the election of the first woman or the first black President is going to Casa Bonita. Yes Casa Bonita does exist and it is in Denver. It is the world’s largest Mexican restaurant seating around 2,000 people and featuring cliff diving and other amusements. Casa Bonita was made famous by a South Park episode.