Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Now I'm all participatory-democracy'd out. Yesterday morning I was there when the polls opened, along with 24 others (3 for the Republican party, the rest of us interested in the real matchup). Another 10 showed up in the first half hour - I know because only 2 of the 7 voting machines were working, and one of the working ones stopped 2 voters in front of me. It took a while, but I like the interface for Hart's voting machines. I'd rather have a paper receipt for accountability, but it was quick and painless. I did notice, though, a set of shelves with flyers for real estate and spring break camps and other non-school-associated groups - I was definitely surprised to see that in a school.

The precinct convention/caucus was a farcus. Supposedly we only had the room for 45 minutes when the Republicans were supposed to get it. Good thing they worked out another arrangement, because the 200+ attendees weren't done signing in for over an hour. It could have been faster except they ran out of sign-in sheets and working pens. We left once people were signed in as there were enough volunteers to be delegates. I'm thinking about getting involved in the Democratic party to see if I can help organize these elections - I was a great Parliamentarian in high school. :-) I still can't stand political parties, but it would be one avenue to get involved, and I find this party's usual goals/methods usually more to my liking than the other one's.

As far as the results, Hillary got a lead of maybe 20 delegates on the day, possibly less as caucus returns come in. It doesn't seem like that's enough of a dent to give her a real chance of winning the primary round, so I hope this will be over by Pennsylvania. Not that I want to disenfranchise those voters, but I'd rather move to the main event than see McCain rest up for a couple of months and keep taking potshots at both of them. If Hillary loses the primaries but wins because of superdelegates, I'll have real trouble voting for her in November. But I won't be alone - I can't imagine her winning the general at this point.

That's about all - not much else going on. I've been slacking hardcore on the working out, and reading's been mostly catching up on magazines in between chapters of A Distant Mirror. Moviewise, I saw The Deer Hunter and The Dark Crystal this weekend. Deer Hunter was good, but not my type of movie. Dark Crystal hasn't aged well, but the story is good.
posted by Unknown 4:24 PM | 1 comments