Bleeding heart conservative, HTMLdon
htmldon
Junior Chimp
Posts: 8,983
Political Matrix E: 1.03, S: -2.26
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« on: February 14, 2008, 02:07:13 AM » |
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I realize that it is unfashionable at the moment to attempt to justify or explain the Washington state Republican caucus. Too often we fall into a culture of complaint and fail to put ourselves into the shoes of the men and women who are actually responsible for getting things done.
I have no direct knowledge of what went on in Washington state, and certainly there might have been unjustified incompetence in the situation - but I tend to doubt it. I also cannot speak to the issue of the Washington state GOP's political competence, that is a separate issue.
I have organized a multi-site caucus and convention before so I do speak with some authority on the subject.
Based on the statement of the WAGOP Chairman and the fact that county orgs were reporting results on their respective websites, it appears that the county parties (usually separate in organization from their state party) were responsible for holding and performing the activities at the caucuses. County party organizations, Republican or Democratic, can vary from competent orgs that may even have paid staff and a strong volunteer corps, to disorganized groups that may only consist of a chairman and a couple of volunteers, usually with some form of mental illness. Most, especially in rural areas, lean towards the latter description.
Political resources and manpower, especially on the Republican side, are stretched to the max right now. Volunteers are not plentiful, new recruits aren't being generated as fast, and state party organizations often can't afford enough staff to organize the disorganized.
Standardized forms, start times and reporting times can go a long way, but if some unpaid volunteer fails to do something right at site 12 in podunk county, then there isn't much the state party staff can do about it from 300 miles away.
As for stopping the count at 10pm or whatever, remember that the volunteer out in podunk county is probably some 75 year old person with early stages of alzheimers who may have gone to bed and was unreachable to discuss the results of their particular caucus after that time.
It seems that the state party may have only had a collecting and reporting function, rather than an organizing function. If a particular county party failed to organize a central reporting mechanism, then its possible that there was no one person or place for the WAGOP to contact in order to ensure proper delivery of the results.
Would it be possible for the Washington GOP to set up a well organized caucus that doesn't have these problems? Of course. Standardized forms, procedures, and appointed overseers who also report back to the state HQ would have gone a long way -- but if the rules and precedent did not permit this level of organization, then how can we hold the current leadership and staff of the state party responsible for something that is beyond their sole control? Bad rules can take years to fix, and for all we know these caucuses may have worked like clockwork when nobody showed up and little was at stake.
It would surprise me if some of the other state caucuses had similar problems, but did not receive the same level of scrutiny if the results were not close.
As someone who has organized this kind of event before, I am just asking that we give the benefit of the doubt to the staff and leadership of the Washington GOP and understand the pitfalls and problems of caucuses.
In a primary election, thousands of paid personel are dispatched to voting locations, with paid individuals responsible for training, voting machines, results collection, supervision, etc. Caucuses depend almost solely on volunteers and non-specialized party staff that find it hard to reach the same level of perfection that we demand from government-run elections.
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