It took about twenty minutes just to find a parking spot. Then we had to stand a block away, in the cold, waiting in line to even enter the building. Once inside the building, we were packed in like sardines (I'm NOT kidding). It took another twenty minutes or more just to get to the right room because of the crowds. There were so many people that I has hanging on tight to Bean, for fear of losing him.
All the good swag was gone, of course. I asked for an Al Franken sticker (I wanted to keep it as a memento), but the guy peeled it off so I had to wear it.
I am not registered to vote in Minnesota. They didn't even look at my ID. They just had me write my name and address in their files and sign. I was planning on not registering for a particular party, but for all I know, they may have registered me as a DFL-er.
They gave me a tiny blue square of paper with a full list of names, including all the folks who've dropped out. I had to borrow a pen. I marked off my candidate, dropped my bit of paper into a cardboard box that reminded me of the boxes you make in Kindergarten to collect Valentines, and left. As I was walking out the door, the caucuses had been going for only an hour, and one of the guys staffing the door said to someone else, "We've already had 10,000 more than last time." (Imagine that amount of people - 10,000 MORE - in your average small junior high school! Now imagine that all those people came through in one and a half hours, because the caucusing only went from 6:30-8.)
The whole thing took about an hour or more, and at several points I almost gave up and went home. But, I'm glad I stayed.
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
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2 comments:
OK, I'm commenting on my own post to say, that CAN'T be right. Can it? 10,000 people in one caucusing location??
A tip regarding stickers--put it on a sheet of paper instead of your clothes. (I carry a memo pad with me all the time.)
Whenever I complain about voting, I think about how hard my great-great-grandmother worked to get me here so I could. (She came from Hungary to America, and was one of the last suffragettes!) Or I think about how hard four years with someone I didn't choose would be.
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