Today was the Nevada Caucuses. Neither of us had ever lived in a caucus state, so we were both virgins. As it turns out, so were many (if not most) of the other caucusoids.
It took place in a lecture hall a couple miles away, at the (Community) College of Southern Nevada. [Recently, the students insisted on removing the term "community" from the college name, complaining that it was somehow pejorative. Sure beats "Junior College", but there's no satisfying some people.)
Two precincts were using the same building. Our precinct was typical of our neighborhood, a rather older demographic than the other precinct represented there (many more students, I think.)
The process was pretty simple. A bunch of boilerplate was read. We counted off the number of people in the room. We then arranged ourself by preference -- Hillary supporters over there, Obama supporters over here, etc. Then each of the groups was counted; the threshold was 15%, and we had 90-some people, so 14 supporters were needed to get a delegate. Since the Edwards and uncommitted supporters did not meet that threshold, we all got to cajole them into joining our own side for 15 minutes. Most of them went to the Obama side. The total, when all was said and done, was something like 54 for Hillary and 48 for Obama, resulting in 4 and 3 delegates respectively. We then chose the delegates -- both of us would have loved to, but he have to be in California when the county convention occurs. That was it.
It was fun meeting a lot of our neighbors in a different context. Those we knew, we knew from meeting on the street while walking Stella, so for a few it was the first safe (e.g., neither of us with overly protective dogs) meeting.
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