The Caucus and Hot Air
We respectfully disagree with our colleagues. Having gone into our second caucus as undecideds, we emerged firmly decided: the caucus stinks. And we weren't even invested in any candidate this time around. The Slog's Erica Barnett makes a good case against it. We'll concede that it was nice to see some neighbors; however, we don't really care to meet our neighbors in this particular context. Block parties, barbeques, chats across the fence, and pleasantries exchanged while taking walks are far better community builders. Politics doesn't build community; it builds cliques. At best, caucuses are just echo chambers for them, like mega-churches in which people get caught up in the moment. At worst, they intimidate.
Our first realization as we waited in line to sign-in was: our mother would never do this. It's hard enough to get her into a voting booth some times. She's a naturalized citizen for nigh on 30 years who is not confident in her perfectly adequate language skills. And shyness is just one reason for her reluctance to participate in this circus; the others are bit more righteously indignant. What business is it of anyone's to know my vote or to get me to change it? She'd be correct; this isn't the Stalinist Poland she was born in. Come to think of it, our father wouldn't put up with this nonsense, either. I don't wanna listen to idiots; I just want to punch my ballot and go home.
The sad irony is that one can essentially vote in private and go home by just signing in and leaving. That's not how this circus sideshow is billed, however. And that sort of confusion just adds to the whole mess. Well, komrade, you can leave if you like but please stay....there is many opportunity. You wish to be loyal to the Party, no?
The carnival atmosphere is perfect for the stump and the trail. There is also a time and place for grousing and kvetching community building; they are known as pubs, pizza parlors, pancake breakfasts, and blogs. But when it comes to finally "pulling the lever" the best way to do it is with informed reflection in a quiet voting booth--or room in the case of absentee/mail-in voting--and with the dignity of a secret ballot. People don't need to be rushed into casting votes; they should take as much time as they want. Nor do they need to be talked into changing their minds up until the last second depending on who or what is fashionable. Frankly, the last thing we want to hear when voting is someone yammering their half-baked political analyses into our ear--we've got our own, thank you.
(Speaking of yammering, you can skip the rest of ours. But we encourage you to look at the numbers, putting last Saturday's turn-out in some perspective, at the very end after the cut).
In the end, we're curmudgeons who just can't drink the Caucus Kool-Aid. We've tried twice now and we'd be lying if we said that the caucus experience wasn't fascinating and full of energy. It's fine for naming delegates and proposing resolutions--A.K.A. party hackery--but for actual voting, nothing beats the simple elegance of casting a secret ballot. We get goose bumps walking into a polling place, touching an official ballot, and marking the crap out of it. We mark every oval consciously, thinking about people we know or read about who were jailed for making their own marks in demand of liberty. Then, we triumphantly insert that sucker into the big box. Finally, we step outside, pause, and inhale a deep breathe of freedom.
Unfortunately, we Americans are too jaded, perhaps for good reason, to realize the immense public significance of the simple, private act of marking something like a ballot. Maybe this is why the bellicose caucus circus is enjoying popularity. I can speak; that makes my vote more important! I can convince others with my well-reasoned political analysis!!! The Republicans have a nice middle ground, at least, with respect to this mess. As usual, the Democratic Party puts up a good talk about participation and grassroots something or other but ends up crapping on a significant portion of their rank-and-file. Interviewed by The Columbian, a Democratic Party spokesperson defended the caucus:
"It's an organic process," said Kelly Steele, spokesman for the Washington Democratic Party. "People go, and they have meetings in their community with their neighbors. We feel that a caucus is the best way to encourage grass-roots organizing by candidates, as opposed to a campaign run by flashy television ads and a less grass-roots process."
Steele said he has doubts about claims that caucusgoers are unrepresentative of the electorate. He pointed out that people who are unable to attend the caucus could have downloaded a form from the party's Web site that would let others caucus as their proxies.
The buzzwords are a bit hollow when taken with Mr. Steele's apparent misunderstanding of some of his constituents' realities. We know plenty of librarians who can attest to the fact that there are large numbers of people who, for a variety of reasons, can't just download a form from a website. Then there is the small issue of compressing the window of time during which one can vote from 12 hours to less than 90 minutes--and further regimenting that time within that small window.
The actual act of voting should be as uncomplicated and private as possible. If we truly believe that it is a responsibility of citizenship, then it should not cater more to the privileged--who, as we have seen in the run-up to, as well as the execution of the caucus, weren't all that informed either. As we have previously seen in the 2004 Ohio debacle or the relatively smooth ex-pat voting in the last Polish election, people will actually get out and wait in long lines to punch a ballot. People grok voting. Relatively speaking, and malfeasance notwithstanding, its mechanics are a fairly well-greased, easy, and standard process. On the other hand, ill-informed PCOs, deplorable time-management, and spontaneous re-configuration of voting spaces are anything but standard or efficient. While it may be true that democracy ought to be somewhat messy, it shouldn't be a mess.
Certainly, perception is reality and the atmosphere of last Saturday's alleged "megagigantic-massive" turnout seems uplifting on first glance. Party apparatchiks will undoubtedly play this up in the future. But the numbers in context are more sobering, to put it mildly. Assuming a turnout of over 200,000 as the Dems speculatively claim (though don't yet provide actual statistics), this roughly equals the number of votes Ron Sims received in September 2004's Democratic primary and less than half of Christine Gregoire's 504,000 votes. More hyperbolically, Saturday's huge turnout equals one-third of the votes cast for Brad Owen (he's the Lietutenant Governor) in the same 2004 primary.
And that was for an election having an overall 45% turnout. [SecofState]. Figuring in Republican caucusers, let's make an extremely generous estimate of 400,000 total caucus votes cast, for the sake of argument. Given the state's approximate 3.3 million registered voters [SecOfState--7/27/2007], that yields about 12% turnout.
Put in that perspective, last Saturday's euphoria is looking like a bunch of hot air floated by party henchmen and peddled by complicit media. We privileged chumps in the blogosphere may be swallowing that line, but we wonder how it's being taken in other sectors, especially those with quieter voices. Elections have their problems but at least polling places stay open long enough for voters to stop in before or after work and other commitments, gloriously free from badgering by their fellow citizens.
