Texas Democratic Party Throws in the Towel

[jgilmore]

Texas has a crazy system of the primary and evening caucus as most of you are aware. I've been in Texas 15 years and didn't know we had a caucus until this campaign. But I am very concerned about something I heard over the television.. According to the Dallas CBS affiliate, the Texas Democratic Party is throwing in the towel when it comes to counting the caucus vote. It is said that many of the caucus forms have never arrived in the mail, or have been lost, or whatever. Needless to say, the party is not going to continue to count the ballots. Let me quote you from the article, Who Won The Texas Caucuses?

" Less than a week after the caucuses, the state party threw in the towel, saying it had ended a voluntary call-in system when fewer than half the precincts reported.

Just over 40 percent of the precinct caucuses were reported to the state. Barack Obama is leading Hillary Rodham Clinton 56 percent to 44 percent. Caucusing reporting so far have elected 23,918 delegates for Obama and 18,620 for Clinton. Those delegates will attend the March 29 regional caucuses, where they will be whittled down before the state convention in June. That's when the final delegate count for the March 4 Texas caucuses will be known."

You can find the rest of the article at http://www.cbs11tv.com

I don't know about the rest of you, but there's something not right here. I heard that the Hillary people were going to wait to the state convention to worry about this. I don't know if that is true or not.

But since when have we started not counting all of the votes? Oh, excuse me. That's a stupid question.

Anyway, I wanted to inform all of you about this. I hope the campaign has a strategy to deal with this one. I can't believe they are stopping the counting and going to distribute delegates the way things are shapping up with only 40 percent of the caucus results in. What do you all think?



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[G4Hillary]

I think Hillary's campaign knows what it is doing in regards to Texas. That caucus was largely illegal and undemocratic so this disarray actually works to our benefit. We can point to it and invalidate it based on the way it turned out. It's a way to drive media perception of this unrepresentative process called the caucus. This is perfect opportunity to slam the entire caucus idea.

[skc1976]

The caucus system is a sham and if this is indeed true, then the caucuses should be null and void and that 1/3 should be divided based on the primary votes. If they can't be ready for their own system, they don't need to have it. A primary is the only way to get an accurate representation of the public, not a caucus.

[Amy Dugan]

I am a medical researcher. TX is a perfect experiment. The primary and the caucus were held in the same state, on the same day, with the same weather conditions, featuring the same 2 candidates.BUT 2 DIFFERENT OUTOMES! The primary resulted in a clear winner soon (Hillary) and the caucus appears to be for Obama as usual. Curious if all the states had closed primaries who would be the nominee. HILLARY

Caucuses keep blue collar workers and old people from voting. Obama's caucus wins cannot be extrapolated to the general election while the primary results can. As far as I know, there are NO caucuses in the general election. Why?
BECAUSE IT EXCLUDES CERTAIN GROUPS AND IT IS TIME CONSUMING. As I recall, Iraq had better voter turnout than the US in 2004. So let us get rid of caucuses in all elections.

[tcbwriter]

Texas has a crazy system of the primary and evening caucus as most of you are aware. I've been in Texas 15 years and didn't know we had a caucus until this campaign. But I am very concerned about something I heard over the television.. According to the Dallas CBS affiliate, the Texas Democratic Party is throwing in the towel when it comes to counting the caucus vote. It is said that many of the caucus forms have never arrived in the mail, or have been lost, or whatever. Needless to say, the party is not going to continue to count the ballots. Let me quote you from the article, Who Won The Texas Caucuses?

" Less than a week after the caucuses, the state party threw in the towel, saying it had ended a voluntary call-in system when fewer than half the precincts reported.

Just over 40 percent of the precinct caucuses were reported to the state. Barack Obama is leading Hillary Rodham Clinton 56 percent to 44 percent. Caucusing reporting so far have elected 23,918 delegates for Obama and 18,620 for Clinton. Those delegates will attend the March 29 regional caucuses, where they will be whittled down before the state convention in June. That's when the final delegate count for the March 4 Texas caucuses will be known."

You can find the rest of the article at http://www.cbs11tv.com

I don't know about the rest of you, but there's something not right here. I heard that the Hillary people were going to wait to the state convention to worry about this. I don't know if that is true or not.

But since when have we started not counting all of the votes? Oh, excuse me. That's a stupid question.

Anyway, I wanted to inform all of you about this. I hope the campaign has a strategy to deal with this one. I can't believe they are stopping the counting and going to distribute delegates the way things are shapping up with only 40 percent of the caucus results in. What do you all think?



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This is incredible! What is going on here?

How about those who assert that the superdelegate system is undemocratic - why aren’t they up in arms about this??

Instead, I heard Ed Schultz today (for 30 seconds before I switched him off) gleefully state that Obama really won Texas because he got the caucus vote and, therefore, ended up with more delegates than Clinton. Funny, that happened with the Nevada Caucus as well. The main difference is that in Texas THE PEOPLE got to vote and THE PEOPLE voted for Hillary.

But hey, so what if it’s activists, republicans and independents giving him all those delegates, so what if the people’s votes have been deemed worthless, so long as your candidate is benefiting. Right?

This makes me sick to my stomach.

[movingtous]

I actually voted early in the TX election, just to avoid the long wait in line. I still ended up waiting in line, outside, in the freezing cold for three hours on election day, in order to caucus! They told us to show up after the poll closes, or we wouldn't be able to caucus. We did. We showed up at a ridiculous voting precinct, an apartment complex. We were told we couldn't park there, so we had to park at various business parking lots, then cross 6 lanes of traffic to get to the caucus site. There, the voters were having an Obama rally. The ballot voting was finally over at 9:30 pm. During the waiting period, no one asked us for our ID or voter cards. No one knew what the heck was going on! At one point, some lady tore out three sheets of notebook paper and passed them out to the crowd and asked us to write our names down. At the same time, another lady was going around the crowd yelling at us and saying that the papers were not worth anything, and that we shouldn't sign them. It was pretty chaotic and ridiculous. We had no clip boards or anything, so the three sheets of paper got pretty crumpled near the end, and we had no idea what became of those sheets. Around 10 pm, we were herded to one side of the parking lot and asked to caucus, outside. I realized that the chairman wasn't going to check ID's, so I asked her to. The crowd laughed and booed me. The chairman turned to me and replied, "I'll check YOUR ID, if you want. Anyhow, the caucus was a joke. The event was over in about 15 minutes, and we kept asking, "Are you sure we can leave now? Is that it?" We finally left, but to this day, I'm not really sure whether or not I was really counted. As for my siblings and their spouses, about 10 of us voted in the primary, and only 5 of us were able to caucus because we all have children to take care of. Tuesday was a school night, and the TX Taks test for school children was Wednesday! One die-hard mom and grandma actually stood around for three hours, with two children, ages 2 and 4. The kids were crying because it was cold and they were hungry. The mom kept trying to comfort them, and poor grandma was just shivering, trying to stay warm. The caucus night was a total mess because they supposedly didn't know that there would be such a huge turnout. Anyhow, I, for one,will NEVER attempt to caucus again!

[G4Hillary]

I actually voted early in the TX election, just to avoid the long wait in line. I still ended up waiting in line, outside, in the freezing cold for three hours on election day, in order to caucus! They told us to show up after the poll closes, or we wouldn't be able to caucus. We did. We showed up at a ridiculous voting precinct, an apartment complex. We were told we couldn't park there, so we had to park at various business parking lots, then cross 6 lanes of traffic to get to the caucus site. There, the voters were having an Obama rally. The ballot voting was finally over at 9:30 pm. During the waiting period, no one asked us for our ID or voter cards. No one knew what the heck was going on! At one point, some lady tore out three sheets of notebook paper and passed them out to the crowd and asked us to write our names down. At the same time, another lady was going around the crowd yelling at us and saying that the papers were not worth anything, and that we shouldn't sign them. It was pretty chaotic and ridiculous. We had no clip boards or anything, so the three sheets of paper got pretty crumpled near the end, and we had no idea what became of those sheets. Around 10 pm, we were herded to one side of the parking lot and asked to caucus, outside. I realized that the chairman wasn't going to check ID's, so I asked her to. The crowd laughed and booed me. The chairman turned to me and replied, "I'll check YOUR ID, if you want. Anyhow, the caucus was a joke. The event was over in about 15 minutes, and we kept asking, "Are you sure we can leave now? Is that it?" We finally left, but to this day, I'm not really sure whether or not I was really counted. As for my siblings and their spouses, about 10 of us voted in the primary, and only 5 of us were able to caucus because we all have children to take care of. Tuesday was a school night, and the TX Taks test for school children was Wednesday! One die-hard mom and grandma actually stood around for three hours, with two children, ages 2 and 4. The kids were crying because it was cold and they were hungry. The mom kept trying to comfort them, and poor grandma was just shivering, trying to stay warm. The caucus night was a total mess because they supposedly didn't know that there would be such a huge turnout. Anyhow, I, for one,will NEVER attempt to caucus again!

So since they were just handing sheets out and not checking ID, would it be possibly that many people simply wrote in phony names or signed many names per person????

The caucus needs to get booted. This isn't Saudi Arabia, last I checked. America shouldn't function on mob rule and that's what a caucus is. I feel like I have take gang members or mafia with me to the caucus for protection. That's sad.

[joeysky18]

i couldn't find the article at the website. it's gone.

[movingtous]

So since they were just handing sheets out and not checking ID, would it be possibly that many people simply wrote in phony names or signed many names per person????

The caucus needs to get booted. This isn't Saudi Arabia, last I checked. America shouldn't function on mob rule and that's what a caucus is. I feel like I have take gang members or mafia with me to the caucus for protection. That's sad.

Well, that's what I thought. It was a very intimidating process, especially when you feel outnumbered and people start ridiculing you. I felt like I was voting in a Banana Republic. My thoughts were that anyone could have written down anything. Also, they lined up only the Hillary supporters, counted us, then said that the rest were for Obama. They didn't even bother to line up the Obama supporters! I told them that I would report them, which I did. Hope the Hillary camp is doing something about this!

[tcbwriter]

i couldn't find the article at the website. it's gone.
Here you go!

http://cbs11tv.com/local/texas.primary.caucuses.2.675031.html

I had to search for it . . .

[skc1976]

I actually voted early in the TX election, just to avoid the long wait in line. I still ended up waiting in line, outside, in the freezing cold for three hours on election day, in order to caucus! They told us to show up after the poll closes, or we wouldn't be able to caucus. We did. We showed up at a ridiculous voting precinct, an apartment complex. We were told we couldn't park there, so we had to park at various business parking lots, then cross 6 lanes of traffic to get to the caucus site. There, the voters were having an Obama rally. The ballot voting was finally over at 9:30 pm. During the waiting period, no one asked us for our ID or voter cards. No one knew what the heck was going on! At one point, some lady tore out three sheets of notebook paper and passed them out to the crowd and asked us to write our names down. At the same time, another lady was going around the crowd yelling at us and saying that the papers were not worth anything, and that we shouldn't sign them. It was pretty chaotic and ridiculous. We had no clip boards or anything, so the three sheets of paper got pretty crumpled near the end, and we had no idea what became of those sheets. Around 10 pm, we were herded to one side of the parking lot and asked to caucus, outside. I realized that the chairman wasn't going to check ID's, so I asked her to. The crowd laughed and booed me. The chairman turned to me and replied, "I'll check YOUR ID, if you want. Anyhow, the caucus was a joke. The event was over in about 15 minutes, and we kept asking, "Are you sure we can leave now? Is that it?" We finally left, but to this day, I'm not really sure whether or not I was really counted. As for my siblings and their spouses, about 10 of us voted in the primary, and only 5 of us were able to caucus because we all have children to take care of. Tuesday was a school night, and the TX Taks test for school children was Wednesday! One die-hard mom and grandma actually stood around for three hours, with two children, ages 2 and 4. The kids were crying because it was cold and they were hungry. The mom kept trying to comfort them, and poor grandma was just shivering, trying to stay warm. The caucus night was a total mess because they supposedly didn't know that there would be such a huge turnout. Anyhow, I, for one,will NEVER attempt to caucus again!

I hope that you've reported this to Hillaryclinton.com They definitely need to know of this experience and what's going on.

[CGP]

Texas Caucuses = Complete Joke = Complete Waste Of Time!

[kari in nebraska]

Nebraska had it's "historic first caucus" on Feb. 9th. Our democratic party chairman determined Nebraska needed to have a caucus as our May primary has never had any bearing on the democratic nominee. He also predetermined the winner of our caucus - Obama. Caucuses were held everywhere from bars (seriously) to churches to schools. My precinct was in a crowded sunday school room where 56 people attempted to squeeze in. No one really knew the "rules" to the caucus which made it even more confusing.
Furthermore, anyone can caucus.... you do not have to be a democrat. You just simply change your party affiliation at the door. You can change it back the next day. All the folks "registering" and directing us at the door wore Obama shirts. Those of us who support Hillary squeezed our way to the door to pass out our signs.
We then made our way to the respective rooms based on our precincts, where each side had 2 minutes to try to convince the "undecided". It sure seemed that Obama supporters got more than that, but I wasn't timing them, so........ Obama supporters talked about how "inspired" they were by him. How he gave them "hope". One woman was moved to tears as she talked about how he inspired her. We (Hillary folks) were able to talk about issues and what she has actually done for our country. In the end, the undecided went to Obama's side.
We actually split the delegates in my precinct, each received 2 delegates.
However, overall, Obama won the state caucus. Hillary took the central and western part of the state, but Obama won the more populated major metro areas.
Hillary did receive (I believe) 8 of our state delegates. Now our democratic party "leader" thinks the primary ( which he has said all along would not count) should determine how our super delegates vote at the convention. He feels they should be forced to vote based on the popular vote after the primary. So, in essence, he wants the Texas two step to become the Nebraska two step.
The irony of the caucus system in Nebraska is that we had half the number of people at the caucus this year as we had at our primary in 2004.
It was cold (10 degrees) and many people had to stand outside for 20 minutes or more waiting to get in the door. I saw very few elderly people there. Many of the jobs in our state are shift workers, so they were unable to caucus as well.
Hillary's "base" of blue collar, middle income, shift workers, and elderly do not attend caucuses. That is why he is winning the caucuses. However.......... Nebraska has not gone blue since 1964, and the mentality of this state has always been, and will always be republican. There is not a doubt in my mind that in November, the state will go for McCain. If the DNC cannot see that first - the caucus is ridiculous, and second - the states Obama has won WILL VOTE REPUB in the general election, then they have their head hidden in sand (or somewhere else that the sun don't shine).
And having seen first hand what a caucus is............ I can attest to voter disenfranchising. :eek:

[movingtous]

I already knew that we were going to do poorly in the caucus because I was actually on the phone the whole day, March 3rd, calling voters in Texas. There were three things that struck me. 1) Almost all of the voters to call on my list were women 2) The majority of these women sounded like they were elderly, and 3) My tally did not match the national opinion polls; most of the voters I called actually voted for Hillary, and the media had Obama up by by 1 or 2 percent. I remember telling everyone I knew that the media would have egg on their face, again.
Anyhow, based on my calls, many of Hillary's voters already told me that they couldn't make it to the caucus. They voted for her, but said that they couldn't caucus. I now understand why. I really cannot see any elderly person cross six lanes of traffic and stand around in a crowd, outside, and feel intimidated! Our caucus site united four precincts, so there must have been about one thousand people there. It was pure lunacy.

[Jayling]

Texas Caucuses = Complete Joke = Complete Waste Of Time!
Exactly!

What is really concerning me now is the 67 Delegates that they're going to allocate now at the State Convention -- doing so when they stopped tallying the results because it was such a mess.

Wrong!

They allocate Delegates based on proportional percentages, all the way to the .thousandth. You can't just arbitrarily say that so-n-so can have this much and the other the rest based on a portion of all the results, not when more votes are yet to be counted which can actually swing it a different way.

I know that caucuses aren't in Hillary's favor since we're not the bullying types, but still this is wrong.

What can be done? Take those 67 Delegates and allocate them the way they should've been done in the first place -- from the 'real' votes of The People during the Primary.

There dang well better be a lawsuit filed over this. It's incredulous this stuff is even happening in this day and age.

We need the UN to step into this fiasco of a voting process we have here in the U.S.

2008 better be the end to the Caucus system. Period.

[Disfranchised]

The disenfranchised voters in Texas can join the disenfranchised voters in Florida and Michigan. Democracy where did you go? :rolleyes:

[movingtous]

The disenfranchised voters in Texas can join the disenfranchised voters in Florida and Michigan. Democracy where did you go? :rolleyes:

We need to call the UN and ask them to oversee our election.

[Jen the Michigander]

A thought-- since so many who cannot attend caucuses are elderly, perhaps the AARP could do something here? They're one of the most powerful political lobbies in this country.

[jgilmore]

So they took the article off the website already. What does that tell us?

Yes, as strong a Hillary supporter as I am I could not caucus. I have severe Rheumatoid Arthritis. I have no health insurance and my meds are $1500 a month. After standing nearly two hours to vote, my body would not allow me to continue into the caucus time. Many of the Hillary supporters are like me. Committed as can be, but physically limited. This is an outrageous system.

[SoCal4Hillary]

Texas has a crazy system of the primary and evening caucus as most of you are aware. I've been in Texas 15 years and didn't know we had a caucus until this campaign. Don't feel too badly about it: I lived in Texas longer than that and it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that I first heard about its primary/caucus system. :confused: Honestly, I had NO IDEA...and I always voted when I lived there (even when there wasn't an ice cube's chance in hell that my vote would matter in determining how the state went). I have no idea how so many years went by and I--a person who likes to think she's pretty well informed--managed to NEVER even know about the split primary/caucus system.

[Cindy C]

I live in North Richland Hils, Texas which is the suburbs of Ft. Worth. I was a co-prescinct captain.
We outnumbered the Barack people but they made sure they had their hands on the caucus and precinct inf. before the primary ended.

There are great reasons why this Caucus is Discriminatory and Bias and hindered the primary votes:

1. Many of the Hilary supporters are mail-ins and the majority of these people are too
old or too ill to go out and night, severly handicap or are not in town.

2. Some of the elderly that did show up left because there was not enough seating
and they were unable to stand up for over an hour(Most of the caucuses did not
end at earliest as 10:45 pm to 3:00 am.

3. Many of the voters are stuggling to make ends meet and they are unable to afford
a babysitter for unknown amount of hours. For some of them, they had maybe
$20 for the rest of the week and it was either stay and pay the babysitter or go
home and put the $20 in his or her gas tank in order to be able to go to work.
Remember, this election was on a Tuesday and these people do not get paid
until Friday.

4. We had several precincts there and they had our election at an Southern Baptist
Church that vote Republican. They put us in a gym while children's basketball
practice was still going on. They asked us to move off of the gym.

I told the man who was in charge of the basketball practice that I was not going to move my Hilary voters and asked him why he put us here in the first place. After that, he understood. He was nice to us I would have to say.

Anyway, we in Fort Worth area are trying to get Hilary supporters to join hands across the US and put our foot down and fight for our rights since the Media likes to drown us out.

Cindy

[pnevai]

Ha and they thought it could only happen in Florida. See what happens when people in other states don't care whan voters are robbed of thier votes?

[josephm]

The caucus system is a very very very old system. We need to get rid off it. It doesn't allow everyone to participate due to the hardship it incurs. The aggressiveness among voters polute the true voice of Americans. This is outrageous.

By the way, regarding many mail-in forms never received, we should think about Florida and Michigan mail-in voting system (if they are going use mail-ins to redo the primary). I don't think it will work fairly. The result will be again, convoluted and contaminated because the system doesn't really work like Primary.

[jerseygirl7]

I hope everyone who witnessed the events at these caucuses reported it - but what has been done about it?? Nothing apparently. I liked the post about getting the AARP involved since it clearly discriminates against the elderly and infirmed. Obama clearly took advantage of this process.

If people took videos of these "events" why haven't we seen any of them?

Dumb question: are the caucuses only for the Dem votes? Before this election year, never knew that caucuses counted. How can they when not everyone is able to participate.

Ok, last dumb question: are any of the remaining states to vote caucus states? I can't handle this process. If there are, then I feel compelled to go to that state to help out!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just unbelievable. Is it 2008 or 1808??? So basically Obama has stolen these caucus states

[jerseygirl7]

I hope everyone who witnessed the events at these caucuses reported it - but what has been done about it?? Nothing apparently. I liked the post about getting the AARP involved since it clearly discriminates against the elderly and infirmed. Obama clearly took advantage of this process.

If people took videos of these "events" why haven't we seen any of them?

Dumb question: are the caucuses only for the Dem votes? Before this election year, never knew that caucuses counted. How can they when not everyone is able to participate.

Ok, last dumb question: are any of the remaining states to vote caucus states? I can't handle this process. If there are, then I feel compelled to go to that state to help out!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just unbelievable. Is it 2008 or 1808??? So basically Obama has stolen these caucus states!

[BloodDAnna]

Look on YouTube, there are plenty of them up. I met a really nice person after commenting onone of the vids I found here actually...she had the same experience as other Texans. Not much different then what we had in Washington. Now that I know the caucus concept people better look out in 4 years!

[foreigner4hillary]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you take a civil class action against the process? If all else fails, take it to court.

[BloodDAnna]

Well sure Hillary could do that and be called a whiner. I think people who were actually intimidated and harrassed need to do the suing. Get angry, get the word out that you don't mess with Texas or its voters.

[Amy Dugan]

i am ignorant, but isn't early voting where you go to the board of elections with your ID and request a ballot, then they mail it to you so you vote at home and mail it in All we hear this year is voting early is easy and Obama promotes it on his emails in states he campaigns and on radio ads. So isn't that like mail in voting for FL and MI?

[G4Hillary]

Amy you are right on. This is classic RezkObama style deception.

Says one thing here then says something else when it isn't convenient to stick by your initial stand.

"Obama represents change. The kind that includes a few pennies, with some nickels and dimes. That should solve gas crises."

[Linda C]

Since the Texas Democratic Party made a mess of their own caucus...Texas should be stripped of their caucus delegates? If one cannot complete a count then you can't add the count that no one can complete.

There is probably a better case here for removing delegates from Texas than there is from Florida, which followed the state law and actually completed the voting process legally under Republican rule and counted the votes properly.

Texas could not even follow their own rules.