Democracy In Action

(All pictures may be clicked to embiggen)

The Texas Primary, as Brave Sir Robin Experienced It.

I Live in a small rural County, (Link goes to Population and demographics) which leans Democratic. As Texas allows early voting, many people take advantage of it. I usually do myself, but this year I changed my mind so many times, I just waited until the last minute. (I'll tell you this, the person I had planned to vote for when I woke up this morning is not the person I ended up voting or caucusing for.)

When I went to vote at about 5:15 PM, there was a line. There is NEVER a line where I vote. In front of me were 3 young (18 as it turns out) black kids voting for the very first time ever. I snapped their picture with the cell phone, but dammed if I can upload it to blogger. I found this interesting, because I have never seen a black person vote in my precinct. There are not many blacks in this town overall, and few live in my neighborhood.

As you can see in the following pictures, the Democrats had a much, much better turn out in my precinct than the Republicans did. (Note: these totals do not include early voters, nor do they include voters from 5:30 to 7:00, a very busy time)

As of 5:30 PM -

Democrat Voters

Republican Voters

At 7:00 I reported back to the polling location for the Precinct Convention. (I vote at the school directly across the street from my house, so I walked.) A note about Precinct Conventions. This was my fourth I believe. The three previous times, I was the only one that showed up.

Twenty Three people showed up for the Precinct Convention. It was a fair mix of male to female, White, Hispanic and yes, Black.

Yours truly was elected Precinct Chairman and I proceeded to call the meeting to order. I really have to tell you, it was exciting! Everyone there was excited. It felt so great to be a part of the process, really, for the first time ever in a primary.

Everyone was polite. We voted to split the delegates by percentage rather than hold multiple votes. My precinct gets 8 delegates to the County Convention. We are sending 5 delegates for Clinton and 3 for Obama.

The votes went almost exclusively along racial lines, with all 6 Black attendees voting for Obama, along with myself, and a very young white couple.

All other whites and all Hispanics went Clinton. It was a very easy and friendly process.

I will be attending the County Convention as an Obama delegate, and who knows? Maybe on to the State Convention.