Offering frequent news and analysis from the majestic Evergreen State and beyond, The Cascadia Advocate is the Northwest Progressive Institute's unconventional perspective on world, national, and local politics.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

LIVE from the 45th LD Caucus in Kirkland

The precinct caucuses may have been two months ago, but it's obvious from the turnout here at our legislative district caucus at Juanita High School that interest in the caucus and convention cycle hasn't waned. The auditorium here is packed with delegates and alternates enthusiastic about taking back the White House and expanding our majorities in Congress this year.

It's been a fun morning - we've heard from our state representatives running for reelection (Roger Goodman and Larry Springer), State Lands Commissioner hopeful Peter Goldmark, and speakers for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Darcy Burner.

Although I didn't come prepared to speak (my voice is a bit scratchy due to a cold I've been trying to shake off) our legislative chair asked me to address the assembly and talk about the work of the Northwest Progressive Institute. So for a few minutes I talked about how I became involved six years ago.

I also described the work that NPI is doing to advance the common good in the Pacific Northwest and across America. And oddly enough, I felt more comfortable speaking off the top of my head with only a minute's notice than I have before (when I've had ample time to think about what to say).

Over a dozen people came up to me over the next hour after that asking for the URL, or web address, of NPI's website, and congratulating me on the smooth delivery of my remarks. I suppose if I can address nearly a thousand people with a semi-hoarse voice with almost no advance warning, I shouldn't have a problem coming up with something intelligent to say at our spring fundraising gala.

It is taking a while for the Credentials Committee to do its tallying work, and some delegates are understandably frustrated, but most people have patiently remained seated as volunteers prepare the report as fast as they can.

Other than the credentials delay, the caucus has been effectively run. The volunteer effort has been strong, there are plenty of refreshments, and the initial sign in process has been well managed.

What is really needed, though, is a computer program that can do tallying and compute which alternates may be seated.

We're about to split into subcaucuses by congressional district and by candidate to elect delegates for the next level (the state convention, which is the second weekend in June, and the congressional district caucus, which will be held the day after our May 16th fundraising gala).

I'll try to update this post with photos as soon as I can.

Comments:

Blogger Kenneth said...

Peter Goldmark also spoke at the 47th District Caucus. He made some good points.

Ken Mareld

April 5, 2008 3:28 PM  
Blogger Turtle said...

saw this on Daily Kos - from a Minnesotan!

Washington has district caucuses today, to determine delegates - here are the results so far for districts around where I live - 1st number is Obama, 2nd number of Clinton

LD 1- 32-12
LD 30- 22-12
LD 36- 52-15
LD 38- 22-11
LD 43- 53-14
LD 47- 27-11

Very early but Obama is outpreforming what he did on Caucus day in every district so far.

April 5, 2008 6:17 PM  
Blogger Todd Boyle said...

Andrew- compliments on your speech. I must read more about the NWPI. I have not been reading enough these blogs!

Regarding the 7 hour delay in vetting credentials, it was tragic in several ways. 1) people will notice that the WA Dems can't even run their own caucus, and draw conclusions about our management of government operations, let alone, our vision for the public sector which is about 1/3 of the GDP. 2) Having that much time, 1000 people present, the chair could easily have organized educational presentations, by setting up rehearsals/planning in the cafeteria or library we rented. 3) the WA Dems software is *bad* and they know it, I worked on the team awhile and found its effectiveness crippled by political turf issues.

April 6, 2008 11:24 AM  
Blogger eridani said...

11th LD Credentials Co-Chair here. A very hairy day for us, as we are split between three different congressional districts and thus required six different delegate selection groups. CD7 had 16 delegates and eight alternates, and that turned out to be 12 Obama/4 Clinton and 6 Obama/2 Clinton. CD8 had 6 delgates and 3 alternates, and broke 4 Obama/2 Clinton and 2 Obama/1 Clinton. CD9 elected 14 delegates and 7 alternates, and broke 10 Obama/4 Clinton and 5 Obama/2 Clinton.

The 5th LD is entirely within the 8th CD, except for one lousy precinct which is in the 9th. There was no way they could allocate fractional delegates to one out of 125 precinct, so they had to caucus with the 11th. They were not happy campers, as anyone wanting to be a delegate had to compete with a crowd of 99% strangers. Too bad, but no one could think of an alternative.

Speakers for candidates were all positive here also. Exactly 3 delegates changed candidates after the last round out of 556.

April 6, 2008 6:33 PM  
Blogger Todd Boyle said...

What we need are voter registration cards with a chip, like the Amex Blue card or the SIM chip in a cellphone--- We're never going to have perfect military reliability but a SIM would be good enough.

The reason so many people oppose any reliable ID card, is they are afraid of information being accumulated about them, by others. And I believe this fear is mostly unfounded, since your sins and foibles are usually no worse than the next guy. But there are too many people hiding too much of their past--and these people are the ones who are persistently defending secrecy in our society. It is primarily the wealthy, bent on hiding their transactions and relationships who are fighting an open society and reliable, permanent systems of reputation that we need to decentralize political power and financial power.

Can we have a reliable ID card PLEASE? Can parties issue this? What would it take?! Once we have a card we can swipe, and vote, we can do the work of a caucus in seconds instead of all day. We can use the extra time for actually discussing and debating policy.

April 7, 2008 9:18 AM  

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