Organizing for America | Lindsey Allen's Blog: County Convention

County Convention

By Lindsey Allen - Apr 1st, 2008 at 7:03 am EDT

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Tags: Convention, Delegates, outside, state, texas

The convention has come and gone and i must say, that was an experience!

I had quite an interesting 13 hour day. I got to the park at around 8am and was surprised to see it already full of people. I mingled with neighbors i've never met before, heard speeches from local candidates, and selected an Obama delegate to go to state. I signed up to be an At Large Delegate and had to wait around more for the process to continue, so i ended up following a gentlemen from my precinct who had volunteered for rules committee. So basically, i went around and met a few Denton Democrat Party Officials and offered to be a volunteer in the future. I didn't think volunteers were necessary anymore since much of the caucusing was over. So i sat down with the Rules Committee and met some interesting people. Soon they realized that no one had tallied the presidential preferences after the registration in the morning, which meant that the At Large Delegate Nomination Proceedings could not begin. It was speculated that it should have been the Credentials Committee or the Nomination Committee that should have handled that, immediately after registration ended. However the box of registration sign in sheets was dropped in front of Rules Committee. it was around 6 pm when this occured and I was adopted into the Rules Committee along with another woman to help sort through it all, as the Cilnton and Obama people circled us watching to make sure everything is calculated in fairness.

First thing i noticed was that there was an inconsistency in how alternates were bumped up to delegates in those various sign in sheets. Next time the volunteers need to be trained in advance to have ONE process, so as not to slow down and confuse those trying to tally up the delegate preferences. In the same vain, some of the alternate sheets, they didn't write down any preference at all and we were forced to consider them as undecided. Fortunately it only happened to a couple.

The second thing i noticed was one precinct page were a registration volunteer tried to add it up in advance, this was the only page i saw that tried to do this. There was only twelve sign in slots on a page and one additional person signed in after that on the second page but their calculation came to 15 delegates 4 Hillary and 11 Obama. Strange math. So I counted it for myself and saw that there really was 11 Obama delegates and only 2 Hillary. What's up with that? I corrected it and moved on, but not until asking what the most correct way of dealing with their previous miscalculation would be. I didn't want to accidentally cause any legal problems.

Well we finished the calculations and overall it was about 66% for Obama and 33% for Hillary. Nominations Committee took those numbers and went to work.

In the end I was chosen as an At Large Alternate! While i learned a lot that day, i'm still not positive what an At Large Alternate really means. I think it's the same as an Alternate, but please correct me if i'm wrong. I still get to go to state regardless, which is what i wanted! Whoo! Austin!

I was proud to be a part of that group of 1600+ democrats.

Lindsey

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By Dynamite Obamanite Apr 1st 2008 at 7:06 am EDT

Way to go Lindsey!!!!

Was not informed when to sign up for At Large Delegate | Report to Admin

By Jeanne Marie "Hussein" Guad Wray Apr 1st 2008 at 2:29 pm EDT

I'm happy that you got to be an at large delegate. Unfortunately, I was not so lucky. I was a volunteer at the registration table, however, I was continually pulled to be a runner to the creditials committee. Prior to volunteering and even during my few hours of volunteering, I continually asked if the delegates that were also serving as volunteers that day would be released from our volunteer status so that we would not miss out on the convention. i was assured we would. After 10 o'clock, when the convention started, i began to ask about leaving my volunteer post and was assured i was missing nothing. I am extremely disappointed that i was not informed when the At Large Registration would close. Therefore, I am not going to state and have worked diligently to get there. I am disappointed that I was misinformed by folks I thought would be helping me to know what to do and when to do it since i was helping them out. I missed nearly all the candidates speeches and did not hear from any of the folks (don't really know if there were any) that were there to give speeches for both Obama and Clinton. I was told there would be speeches given on there behalf. I didn't get to hear most of the local candidates speeches. I did think that the County convention was going to be more about the presidential candidates since those attending were mostly presidential candidate delegates, save for a few visitors that were not.

Re: Was not informed when to sign up for At Large Delegate | Report to Admin

By Lindsey Allen Apr 4th 2008 at 1:00 am EDT

Well i dont recall there being very many speeches nor any for Hillary or Obama. I would have expected some but there wasn't. Also I believe the At Large sign in tables had to be reopened since they weren't very diligent in announcing anything. The second time i think they closed it around the same time or a little afterwards of the elected delegates and alternates from each precinct signing in i think around 3:30 or 4. They definitely weren't ready to handle the major influx of people very efficiently. There was so many people on the at large list that it was unlikely one would be chosen, but since you had helped out they should have considered you first. To be honest the only reason why i even knew about any of that stuff was because of Booker who was in my precinct and also part of Nominations Committee. Otherwise i wouldnt have known anything about the At Large

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