A Caucus-Race . . .

Democracy is a loud, messy, confused business. That's the main thing I learned from taking part in the Washington State Democratic Caucuses on Saturday. At issue, of course, was the decision of whom to nominate as the Democratic candidate for President of the United States.

Some states have primary elections. They're fairly straightforward: people stagger in to the polling place, punch the wrong hole in the confusingly-laid-out ballot, and get on with their lives. The news media likes this system because it gives them an exact number of votes. Everybody knows (especially after the 2000 debacle) that the number is almost certainly inaccurate, but it provides a warm, fuzzy feeling.

On the other hand, newspeople hate caucuses. Slate, in particular, seems to take them as a personal insult. Consider this article which basically calls caucuses an affront to the democratic system because TV news won't have exact numbers. Or this one where Mickey Kaus, in his random-boldfacing way, gets all hot and bothered about the confusing nature of caucuses. In fact, back during the Iowa voting, Slate wouldn't shut up about how much they hated caucuses.

They're not the only ones, either. A Google search for "caucuses" and "undemocratic" turns up 2,270 hits. When you consider that "undemocratic" alone gets 186,000 hits, that means that over one percent of all the times people call something "undemocratic," they're talking about caucuses. That seems high, considering that I found caucuses to be more purely democractic than the usual voting system.

To start with (at 10:00 am on Saturday), I had to go to the meeting place for my precinct, "precinct" being an old-timey word for "neighborhood." I didn't know what precinct I was in, so I checked the Internet, which was singularly unhelpful. All I could do was narrow it down to my Legislative District, which contains about a hundred precincts. Luckily, most meeting places were shared by several precincts, so I went to the one that was closest. Tragically, that was the wrong one and I had to go back the other way for about a mile until I got to this elementary school where six or so precincts would be caucusing. There were a lot of people and it took about an hour for everybody to get signed in and separated by precinct.

My precinct had 64 people. The first thing we had done upon signing up was write down our initial preference. This, by the way, is one of the "undemocratic" things that gets people hot and bothered: it's not a secret ballot. Personally, I don't care that much. We're not electing a dictator here, we're deciding on a nominee. Besides, the essence of democracy is that the people decide things; the other stuff is basically extras. Anyway, the precinct captain tallied the votes, and then people had a chance to switch their allegiances.

The rule is that candidates ("undecided" counts as a candidate) with fewer than 15% of the vote in a precinct don't get counted. Some people feel that that artificially denigrates minority candidates, but I'm not sure what they want to do about it. Our precinct would be electing four delegates to go to the Washington State Caucus in May, so I would think that anyone with much less than 25% would be more or less screwed.

So the first tally had 24 for Dean, 13 for Kucinich, 11 for Kerry, 8 for Undecided, 4 for Edwards, and 4 for Clark. That's right; my neighborhood had more Kucinich than Kerry. There are a lot of hippies around here. So then there was the speechifying stage, in which supporters of the people above the 15% line (that's Dean, Kucinich, and Kerry) tried to convince supporters of people below the line to change their allegiances. You know the deal: "Vote your heart: go with Kucinich." "No, vote for the electable guy: vote Kerry." "Dean's anti-war!" And so on. Plus, some supporters of minority candidates tried to convince the others to band with them. Every candidate got spoken for. Even "undecided" got spoken for, on the theory that a delegate for "undecided" could go to the May caucus and pick someone then. After a lot of speeches, people who wanted to change their affiliation went up to the precinct captain and did so.

In the end, we had 66 voters (because two people had accidentally been grouped in the wrong precinct) and the vote went Dean 32, Kerry 14, Kucinich 13, Undecided 6, Edwards 1, Clark 0. Interesting point: Dean went up by 8 and Kerry went up by 3, but Kucinich didn't gain any votes. So now we divided up by affiliation, with the Dean people over there and the Kucinich people over there, the Kerry people right here, and the other people SOL. Yeah, I guess they're disenfranchised now, but that's what they get for not making up their minds. The Dean people got to elect two delegates (and two alternates), while the Kerry and Kucinich people got one each.

This is where the democracy got really hands-on. We had to actually pick a delegate from the people around us. Compare that to, say, a primary where you have no idea who you're selecting to go represent you in the National Convention. I know the person who will be conveying my wishes to the State party, and who will be helping to select the representatives for Boston.

Incidentally, I don't know if this means anything, but the Kucinich crowd was mostly young folk, the Dean crowd was mid-twenties (with a lot of Dean bumper stickers on their clothing), and the Kerry crowd was almost entirely older guys with white beards. There was very clear demographic splitting.

So the whole process took about three hours. It was, as I said, loud and messy and confused. At one point, the local party collected money to pay for things like, well, the caucus. He was carrying around a trash bag that people were putting money in. And I think there's no more apt symbol of local democracy than a garbage bag full of cash.

See, here's the thing. I understand why it bothers Slate that they don't get an exact vote count at the end of the day. But on the other hand, I have a count. I know exactly how my neighborhood voted, and I even know why most of them voted the way they did. I didn't need to come home and turn on the local news to find out what happened; I got to see it in action. And I think that's more useful to the invididual voters.

Plus, I got to hear things like "You're all intelligent; you'll figure it out" and "I was a delegate for Jesse Jackson and Jerry Brown, so -- no, wait. Ignore that."