Lucky Caucus Day

Before heading off to the Nevada Caucuses, I walked to the Wigwam Restaurant/Casino, and after having breakfast, redeemed my $10 free play with purchase of a meal coupon. I also had a coupon good for a $10 bonus free play on any $10 jackpot. I told the attendant to just stay with me at the machine and wagered the $10 free play on a single hand of blackjack, which I won. That turned the initial $10 free play into $20 real money. She then paid off the $10 free play, and I carefully wagered that. When I'd burned through the free play, I had $32 cash, which I redeemed. That not only paid for breakfast today, but also a few weeks ago when I did not win anything from the free play. Not a bad use of "house money."

Feeling pretty chipper, I walked home and drove off to do my civic duty at the Nevada Caucus.

My First Caucus

Today was my first experience with the caucus system of determining delegates to the Democratic National Convention to select a presidential candidate. Through the last presidential election, I was a Californian, but I established Nevada residency a few years ago. At the end of today's experience, I found myself one of the selected delegates to the county Democratic convention to be held in Yerrington in April.

( Glad I Got There Early )

( Why Nevada Uses the Caucus System )

( My Place in the Caucus )

( Participatory Democracy is Sometimes Slow )

( At Last We Begin )

With the preliminaries out of the way, we got into the actual caucus process, which actually turned out to be pretty simple, especially with only two candidates. In my precinct, 30 people attended, and therefore with six delegates allocated to us, a candidate would need at least 5 votes to be considered viable. If necessary, we would have done multiple rounds, but there were no undecided voters in our precinct, so we were able to reach a decision pretty quickly. A precinct captain worked through the numbers, and I checked his math and helped a little bit, prompting him to post the figures on the board.

After everything was finished, I went around and took pictures of all of the precinct returns. In one case, I got a Sharpie and wrote them on the big board, transcribing from the actual official precinct return, because they hadn't written it up as they were counting. Here's all of the returns, starting with my own precinct and working backwards.

( Pictures of the East Fernley Precinct Returns )

The overall results from the East Fernley Caucus:

Hillary Clinton: 16 delegates
Bernie Sanders: 15 delegates

Despite the nearly even split, the mood at the caucus was generally quite respectful. I was unhappy with Sanders supporters booing Hillary's letter, but it was only scattered. I'm told that violence actually broke out at one of the other Fernley caucuses, apparently spawned by people not being allowed to bring food inside the caucus, as partisans had brought cookies. As I mentioned above, the police were called to our caucus, but only to deal with people illegally parked.

( Picking Delegates to the County Convention )

I'm decently excited about my experience with the caucus system, and hope that I'm able to participate constructively at the county level. I doubt I'll go much past that, though, particularly inasmuch as I assume the state convention will be in Las Vegas, where most of the people in the state live, and that might prove problematic for me to attend even if the county convention saw fit to elect me as a delegate.