2016 Democratic Caucus

The Experience

2016+Democratic+Caucus

Avery Griggs

Standing outside waiting in line to participate in a once in a four year experience, with a line wrapping around the block behind me. I wait patiently, surrounded by people who support the same ideas I do. Super Tuesday was upon us.

While some states hold a primary, Colorado is fortunate enough to hold a caucus. A caucus is simply a local gathering where voters decide which candidate to support and select delegates for nominating conventions. A primary is  statewide voting process in which voters cast secret ballots for their prefered candidates. Unfortunately the caucus that I attended was a weird hybrid of a primary caucus.

As I entered the overly crowded halls of University Park Elementary I was engulfed in a herd of democratic voters trying to figure out their precinct number and where to go.

We were packed into the Elementary School’s auditorium where they read the rules for the caucus and how the evening was going to look. As the temperature of the auditorium began to climb so did the tension between the Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders voters.

The final rules were read and we were off to find our designated rooms, we were organized by precinct, yet the rooms were not organized numerically so people were running around the building trying to find their precinct. People began to flood into the rooms, the rooms slowly started to look like submarines with the amount of people in them. I found myself sitting on the floor along with neighbors and friends who were in precinct 249 with me.

We started the caucus off by dividing the room by candidates. Unfortunately the majority of my precinct was voting for Hillary. The count came up to Hillary getting significantly more votes than Bernie. The amount of delegates each candidate receives is based on the amount of votes. If selected as a delegate that person would then attend the District Caucus. Based on the results from our vote Bernie got one delegate where Hillary got five.

Overall it was a great experience, yet I was disappointed at the lack of actual act of discussing or caucusing.

Bernie Sanders won Colorado receiving 59% of the vote along with 38 delegates, Hillary Clinton got 41% of the votes and 28 delegates.