What Clinton's telling her own precinct captains - Doesn't pass the smell test

[Emit]

I'm not familiar with the Texas caucus, but encouraging her precinct captains to request the envelope, as it will allow her supporters to become temporary chairs and "control the start of the precinct convention" is alarming. And it sounds like it will be ripe for contention.

In our caucuses in NV, the Democratic Party selected temporary chairs, trained them, encouraged them to be fair and honest in their duties, etc. It's always stressed in our party here that when you volunteer for the party during a primary, you, of course, can support your candidate, but on official party business, you remain as fair and objective as possible. The notion of having a particular candidate's volunteers coming in and trying to disrupt a planned caucus by getting the envelope first, or taking out their own materials and announcing the start of the meeting seems patently unfair and underhanded, IMHO.

We'll see how this plays out. In my precinct, both our captain and I (co-captain), were in the minority as Edwards' supporters. Things went smoothly and it's my impression that having a more objective chair had a lot to do with it.

On Saturday morning, Clinton told 200 precinct captains in San Antonio they needed to seize control of the election-night caucuses.

~snip~

... Clinton backers passed out flyers urging precinct captains to request the “envelope” full of materials at the caucus that will allow them to serve as temporary chair of the caucus.

“If there is no envelope, take out your own materials and announce the start of the convention,” the instructions say. “Possession of the envelope allows you to serve as temporary chair and control the start of the precinct convention.”

Clinton, her voice growing hoarse, urged the precinct captains to recruit their friends.

“There are 8,000 sites for these conventions and we want to be represented for each and every one of them,” she said.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/elections/821114,clinton030208.article

edit to add a word/edit title

[Diane R]

1. Sure sounds like Hillary doesn't think she can win if she plays fair, does it?

[Emit]

3. It does

and it really bothers me. If this is what is happening, and it appears that's what she's telling her folks, then this will be a potentially bad situation, and I will have lost even more respect for the woman.

Perhaps I'm being alarmist. But I met up with rapid supporters in my caucus and had to send them to their corners and whatnot. I know what this could turn into -- if her captains usurp control, then they set the rules. They can lock out voters, add numbers their way, call in results their way, whatever they feel they need to do to win.

Makes me very uncomfortable, it does.

[crispini]

16. The meeting must be conducted according to Robert's Rules of Order

and the Texas Democratic Party rules.

If the other side is on the ball (and I think they will be) this is not going to be a major problem. I hope.

[Califooyah Operative]

13. That's the pattern - Iowa, Nevada, SC, Florida, Michigan, and now Texas.

Rules? what rules?

[dkf]

2. I don't trust her with the Red Phone and I don't trust her with the envelope either.

[Emit]

4. I'm assuming the Obama volunteers and coordinatorsin TX are aware of this

I hope anyway.

[Dogmudgeon]

5. It only stinks when Hillary does it

Obama has been concentrating on the "ground game", dealing with the caucuses for the entire primary season. That is one of the reasons why he has done so well in the caucuses -- he planned for them in great detail.

But now that Hillary is planning for a caucus, you're crying "foul".

Obama's planning and tactics for the "cauci" are not secret, they have been discussed on TV and online, but nobody is whining about how he "isn't playing fair!"

I can understand playing politics, but the unwritten law seems to be that everything Obama does is interpreted as good and everything Clinton does is interpreted as evil, even when they are doing the same thing. It's not even subtle.

--p!

[dkf]

6. Because I haven't seen efforts to disenfranchise from his side.

Her side, I have.

Even if I wasn't supporting him, I would trust him to run an election before I trust her.

[Emit]

7. I don't recall any news articles saying that Obama himself told his captains to take the envelope

A caucus is run by the party, and the volunteers from the party have a standard to follow. If volunteers from either candidate overstep their boundaries, I would call attention to it as unfair play, no matter which candidate I support.

Do you have any links from past caucuses that depict Obama volunteers taking the caucus chair envelope from the get go and running the meeting? In fact, do you have any information of unfair caucus dealings on the part of either candidate?

What Obama "planning and tactics" are you referring to?

[northzax]

8. read the rules

you can find them on the Texas democratic party's website. If the chair is absent at the official start time of the caucus, the first person who asks to fill in becomes the acting chair. Hillary' was simply informing her supporters of this rule, which I doubt many people knew.

[Emit]

9. And as temp chair, they have to be voted in, too, right?

So a rabid supporter busts in, demands the envelope because the caucus chair is a no show, the other candidate's supporters say no, insanity ensues. What a mess.



I hope the party is doing every thing they can to prevent this mess and to ensure they have reliable and well trained volunteers to run these caucuses.

[crispini]

14. The temporary chair does not have to be voted in.

But all they do is start the convention.

[Emit]

17. As I understand it, they are temp chair until they are voted in

In our caucus, the temp chair started the meeting, then, before opening the caucus, he had to be voted in. He then proceeded to run the caucus, in our case, by unanimous consent.


Is that how yours went, crispini?

I know you recently chaired your caucus, IIRC. Which, how did that go, btw? :hi:

[crispini]

21. they are temp chair until they (or someone else) are voted in.

and mine is Tuesday night. Keep your fingers crossed for me! :hi:

[guruoo]

18. At least appoint chairs that can be trusted to show up on time. - n/t

[Emit]

19. The party relies on volunteers

I know in NV I was shocked to hear some of our party chairs didn't show up. Our party is only as strong as it's volunteers, in these cases. Anyway, we also didn't have enough volunteers to fill the role of chairs to begin with -- you have to be in your own precinct to chair the meeting, so finding people to do this was a difficult task. We were scrambling to meet the deadline and find enough good people to commit to this process.

[guruoo]

24. I really believe it's time to consider dumping the caucus system, and

switch to elections to determine party nominees.

[Emit]

41. The reason the that the NV Dem Party had an early caucus iinstead of an early Primary

is cost and the fact that a primary, as I understand it, has to be coordinated with the State Registrars Office.

The Dem Party here spent in excess of $2 million for the caucus. A primary would've been even more.

[ClayZ]

10. I wondered why it was Hillary person who,

was the first one there and the chairperson at our caucus here in Washington State. There were 34 of us for Obama 11 for Clinton.

I noticed there were a lot more Hillary people giving out posters, buttons, and stickers, etc.

It was my first caucus.

I hope the above ratio continues with Texas and Ohio! :-)

[Emit]

12. Actually, here it says

4. Eligibility to Participate. Any qualified Democratic voter 18 years of age or older who resides in the precinct where the convention will be held and who votes in the Democratic Primary, whether early or in person, shall be eligible to attend, to participate in, and to be a candidate for any Party Office or for any Delegate or Alternate position to be filled at that convention.

5. Duties of Convention Officers. The Permanent Chair shall preside over the convention immediately upon being elected and shall be responsible for appointing any convention Committees as the Chair deems necessary or as directed by the convention. The Chair also shall be responsible for ensuring that an accurate written record of convention proceedings is kept, including the list of persons present and a list of Delegates and Alternates elected to the County or Senatorial District Convention. The lists shall include residence addresses and cities or towns. (Texas Election Code §174.027)

6. Order of Business. The order of business at Precinct Conventions shall be as follows:

(a) Call to Order by the Precinct Chair or, in the Chair's absence, by any qualified participant...
http://www.txdemocrats.org/the_party/article_iv_party_conventions

So, it's not just the first person who asks to fill in gets to chair. They have to be qualified (see #4?) and subsequently be voted in as permanent chair.

[sandnsea]

11. Getting people to the caucuses

not keeping people out of them, which is the reason the Clinton campaign wants her people to take over the caucuses. Like happened in some locations in Nevada. At least she has stopped trying to keep students from voting.

[crispini]

15. By law, if the precinct has a chair, that person is the temporary chair of the convention.

I really don't know how many precincts don't have a chair.

It could get interesting, in those without.

[Emit]

20. Is that chair elected by the state Democratic Party or county Democratic Party?

Is that how they become chair?

And, for those precincts without, does the party select a chair?

Also, who trained you for the caucus? Was it the Democratic party doing the training, or did your particular candidate campaign train you?

Just curious to see how this all works in TX. My caucus was in NV -- and we relied on Iowa as a model 'cause it was all new to us.

Thanks for the info, crispini!

And thanks for your participation in the process. Without folks like you, we wouldn't be having these meetings.

[crispini]

23. The precinct chair is elected by the members of that precinct,

during a primary election (we have several on the ballot this time), or, if the precinct chair takes office when there is no primary pending, he/she is elected by the county executive committee, which is all the other chairs in the county. We meet quarterly for that kind of business.

For precincts without, people sign up and then they are elected at one of the quarterly meetings of the county executive committee. Usually with no contest, but sometimes there is. I was elected this way. (First election I ever won, LOL.)

I have attended three trainings for the caucus. Two were put on by the state party executive director, one was put on by two of our state democratic executive committee members.

What was the order of business at yours? I have heard a little bit about Iowa, and ours sounds very similar to theirs.

Cheers! :toast:

[Emit]

42. The order of business

Check in, Registration reading of candidate letters
Caucus was called to order at 11:30 (but we asked to have it delayed because we were still checking people in and the line was very long)
Reading of Agenda and messages from Harry Reid and State Dem chair, Jill Derby
Pass Contribution envelope
Election of Permanent Chair and Secretary
Noon: Head count and announcement of Viability threshold for caucus
1st alignment
2nd alignment
Caucus math applied and delegates apportioned
Sign off caucus math
Report final caucus results to party headquarters
Elect delegates and alternates
Paperwork for delegates, requests to be on county central committee, county platform resolutions, etc.
New business
Adjournment

And, our precinct chairs were not elected, although I see that in the future, it might come to that. We were all volunteers, who had at some point been involved as a party volunteer, and in most cases we either volunteered to be a party chair (or other role) or were asked by the party. And training for the caucus, including for chairs, secretaries, etc., started months in advance by the party and volunteer District Coordinators. We've done well in N. NV with our grass roots coordination of volunteers starting in late '04/early '05, implementing an upside-down pyramid-like plan that fit nicely with Deans 50 state plan. That gave us a structure of volunteers that helped to manage the new early caucus, and reach out to voters in neighborhoods across our county. I'm not sure the same was done in LV.

[yourguide]

22. If we can't win it fairly...

then let's steal it.


another brilliant strategy by Mark Penn :sarcasm:

[guruoo]

27. IMHO fault lies first, with the no-show chairs and second, the Obama campaign

for not thinking to have someone there to 'take charge'
if the caucus chair doesn't show.

(Kudos to Mr. Penn for attention to detail).

[yourguide]

30. Not sure how you can fault the Obama campaign

when they won all of the caucus' fair and square except the ones in Nevada that were run by the pro-hillary union in which they tried to close the doors early.

Yes, kudos indeed to Mr. Penn for losing a 30 point lead, blowing all of HRCs money before super tuesday, and for his dirty politics...kudos indeed :sarcasm:

[guruoo]

32. I fault them for the reason stated in that post. n/t

[anigbrowl]

34. You assume that the Obama campaign haven't planned for this

but I like your attempt to justify 'seizing control'.

Happily, the Obama ground game has been so good everywhere else that I expect it'll do just fine in Texas.

[guruoo]

36. She knew this caucus rule would leave the chair open to be 'seized' by Obama camp

This was no more than good attention to detail.

[UALRBSofL]

25. OP, Hillary is right.

I wouldn't trust the Obama supporters or the republicans voting for him. If it were me at the caucus' I'd want to be a chair because the Obama camp wants to win at any cost.

[JTFrog]

26. Apparently it's opposite day in Hillaryland.

:crazy:

[Yael]

28. It is the alternate universe syndrome

[Emit]

29. And what makes an avid Hillary supporter any more more unbiased?

The point is, IMHO, is that no candidate volunteer should be rushing in and trying to take the reigns from the captain, who, I think in most cases, is associated with the Party first, and a candidate second. The process has to be fair, or we all lose.

I don't recall any news about Obama's supporters butting into the caucus process to bias the caucus results. I do know he's drawing big support in the caucuses -- his supporters are showing up, but that's an entirely different matter.

Do you have any links to this effect?

[guruoo]

35. I believe the offical campaign is pretty straight up, but the field workers

are another story entirely. I promise you, the only reason they're upset about
this is the fact that, unlike Hillary, their official campaign didn't have enough
sense to have people there to take up the caucus chair in the unlikely event that
the chair didn't show up.

[Zachstar]

31. VIDEO CAMERAS!

Images will not do it. Bring your cameras to the caucus areas and document everything you legally and ethically can. If she wants to pull some shit then it needs to be documented so a lawsuit can quickly be filed against her while it is shown it the media.

This is not funny anymore. Clinton is on her last legs and she gives me no reason to believe she will not try something.

Remember that there are those who will take a small loss or a tie as a sign that she for some reason must drag this on for another month! This must not happen. The people need to have their voices heard!

BRING YOUR VIDEO CAMERAS!

[Emit]

40. We had people video taping at ours -- Obama volunteers from out of state

I wish I had gotten their names. I'd like to see it.

[Avalux]

33. I wll be caucusing with my camera and will document.

Hillary supporters had better not try anything funny in my precinct.

[UALRBSofL]

37. I wouldn't trust the Obama supporters

any farther then I can throw them. I'm sure Hillary has wised up to all the caucus' Obama has won and has figured out his strategy of winning them dirty. She will not let that happen in Texas.

[Emit]

38. You keep implying that the reason Obama has done well in caucuses is because there was some sort of

underhandedness on Obama's volunteers'/campaign's part. Do you have documentation to support this?

[Lisa0825]

43. The caucus favors high organization.

That is thhe simple answer as to why Obama has done better. More feet on the ground.

[Emit]

44. I agree

I was so surprised to see how many Obama volunteers from other states coming to watch our caucuses. Clinton had some, mostly from one of the unions in Iowa, too, but Obama's campaign seemed to have more of an organized grassroots thing going on in our state.

[NoPasaran]

39. Hope your batteries are charged

Hillary's been training her supporters to make balloon animals!
:scared: