The down side is that you have to pay $40 to do so, which is bullsh[Inks]. It's $50 if you pay after Valentines Day for god knows what reason. What kind of stupid ass system of democracy is this? Oh yeah, it's a caucus; democracy is not applicable.
The reasoning is probably paying the expenses of the state convention. They asked for a donations at both district conventions I've been to but it's never been mandatory. There's the Republicans for you.
What also struck me as odd about this is that we had elected our delegates before we even knew each other's presidential preferences. So, let's say for argument's sake that all 199 registered Republicans had shown up. 185 of those intended to vote for Ron Paul, and 14 for Mitt Romney, but of course none of this was known by this point. Let's say that the delegates we elect all happen to be from the Romney camp. Despite Ron Paul winning our precinct by a massive margin, all four delegates we send to the county convention will likely go on to vote for Mitt Romney. WT[I]? Again, democracy is clearly not applicable here.
Well no because the straw poll results are binding. So that just means the Paulites don't get a say in who the Paul delegates from state would be. Same system we use. Not perfect but still better than a non-binding straw poll caucus.
Yeah, from my experience with the Minnesota caucus, it sounds like they were really doing it wrong at yours. You should know who the people running for delegate support for president before you vote them in.
Well he said this is only the second caucus the NVGOP has done. Minnesota has been doing caucuses since the 60s, so it's not surprising we're a bit more organized.
The delegate thing doesn't matter though as I noted. That was the same case as it was in my precinct in 2008, where we had more delegate positions open than people who volunteered.
That's awesome! When's the next stage of being a delegate? Are Paul people coordinating with you about it, or will there just be more chaos?
Also, if you want to advance further and being a Ron Paul hack isn't really doing it for you, you could always plea that "they picked me as a precinct delegate before we voted so I thought I had to support the candidate my precinct did?"
Are you familiar with what happened at the Nevada Republican state convention in 2008? LOL. What will probably happen is he'll get a phone call or two from the Paul people reminding him of the convention and possibly even from the other candidates trying to convince him to switch. I got calls from the Senate candidates in 2008 and Gubernatorial ones in 2010 even though I was clearly known as a Rybak supporter. Of course for the Senate and Gubernatorial endorsement votes they mattered, the Nevada GOP presidential delegate counts are already set in stone.
Lol. This is hilarious. (Just how large is that precinct?) As noted above, that happened at both caucuses I've participated in, but both times we were selecting a massive amount of delegates, around 40-50. Probably a result of the formula being based on how many votes DFL candidates get but in this area there being a ton of DFL voters who aren't likely to participate in a caucus. Not surprising.