Washington State GOP Caucus

I went to the Washington State Republican caucus on Saturday and it was a lot of fun.  There was a lot of excitement there it was really interesting.

The 25th Legislative district, which my precinct is in, met at the Elks Lodge in Puyallup.  There were huge lines but since I had my voter registration card I got to go in a short line.  Last year 408 people showed up to caucus, which was the most they had ever had, but this year there were over 2,000.

Here's a picture of two people I know from church.  We were all for Romney.  The place was so packed there wasn't even enough room for everyone to sit and some of the precincts moved outside.

We noticed lots of TV cameras there and then Ron Paul, one of the presidential candidates showed up in person. 

 He gave a great rousing speech and the Ron Paul supporters were very enthuastic.

You had to find your table where your precinct met.  I will have to tell you about our caucus because I got elected to be a delegate to the Convention.  There were only 9 people at my precinct, representing about 200 people.  First we 9 voted for the popular count, which is non-binding but gets reported to the press for the day's votes.  At my precinct - 4 voted for Rick Santorum, 3 for Mitt Romney, and 2 for Ron Paul.  After that vote we go to elect 2 delegates to the County republican convention where the delegates to the National Convention will be elected.  So for our precinct we got to elect two delagates but the rule was you had to have a majority to be elected, so out of 9 that would be 5.  But no group at our precinct had 5, with the most for Santorum but only 4.  So they asked who wanted to run for a delegate.  I volunteered and 2 of the Santorum people, but none of the Ron Paul people.  You had to have five vote for you and so I knew the Ron Paul people would be the deciding votes.  When it was my turn to talk, I told why I liked Mitt Romney, and then I told the Ron Paul people he was my second choice and I liked a lot of his policies.  So the first vote took place and they said no one got 5, but one person got 4.  I figured that was me and I got the 3 Romney people and 1 of the Ron Paul people must of voted for me and the other one for one of the Santorum candidates.  The Santorum people were split since there were two of them trying to be a delegate.  Then one Santorum candidate dropped out, I think so all 4 of them could vote as a block.  So we voted again   They said this time one person got 5 votes and it was Doug Swift.  I guess both Ron Paul people switched to me so the Santorum people wouldn't get it.  So now I'm a delagate to the convention.

So I'm off to the Pierce County convention next as a Mitt Romney delegate.  Go Mitt!!