At the Romney gathering tonight, all his supporters are extremely confident about the path ahead. I know we worked our heart out and were able to exceed what we had expected to get in turn out. But looks like the Hucksters were able to do that as well and even better. The margin of victory in real numbers? Just 100 more voters in each of Iowa's 99 counties. Unbelievable, but true. Caucuses are just like that.
I got to go be a precinct campaign representative for a caucus in downtown Des Moines. There were actually 4 caucuses I was asked to oversee at this location. These were smaller precincts that were all crammed into an elementary school gym. A little chaotic and very hard for people to hear, to say the least. I made a speech to encourage voters to vote for Mitt at three of them, the fourth one never heard a call for candidate supporters to speak. There were at least 3 precincts with evangelical leaders in them who'd shepherded in voters from their congregations. Romney tied for first in 1 of the four, the one where I didn't notice a pastor with his flock.
The Romney voters I spoke with after the results were read were sure proud of their candidate and looking forward to him getting the nomination so they can vote for him again in November.
The voting process here from what I observed was so foreign to what I'm used to back in our orderly (boring?) system in NY. Even at a NY party county convention where we have to cast ballots on an issue it's done more orderly than this. In some other caucus locations I was told it was utter chaos. They were supposed to cast ballots on paper and then have them tallied. But some places just handed out paper without verifying that the people were registered, other locations didn't even bother with the paper and just had a show of hands. Nothing overtly crazy where I was, but still there were some things that just seemed to me, having served as an election inspector and a poll watcher in NY, like they were the just not that concerned about the integrity of the votes.
Maybe this explains why... An Iowa GOP leader explained to me the whole caucus process for the Republicans is actually a non-binding "straw poll" and that no convention delegates were actually selected tonight. I mentioned that in a conversation with an AP reporter at the party tonight who agreed that the media never makes that clear to people reading the results.
For all the new/strange/interestingness if the process to me at my first caucus, that may just be the way this always is. Glad I got to experience it first hand, and share some of it on the blog.
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