User profile: Concerned

I was very disappointed with the Caucus process and the Obama campaign. I agreed to serve as a Caucus Chair and quickly determined that some of the other people attending the temp caucus chair training did not understand the process. An easy prediction that some of the precincts were going to be very disorganized. On caucus day, an Obama supporter tried to fraudulently register for my precinct. I tried to help this person figure out which precinct they belonged to. The person glanced at our precinct map and misread a street name. So they first gave a non-existent street name and then said that they could "not remember" the name of their street. After asking the person to describe their home area and telling them that the description did not match our neighborhood, they finally relented and went into another precinct caucus meeting.

After our meeting had started (the 11:30 am party business meeting) another Obama supporter walked into our meeting and wanted to know how many Obama supporters we had. After first determining that she was not there to register for our precinct, I politely (e.g., always used a friendly tone) told her that she was welcome to stay and observe but that she could not participate or speak to the group. She tried one more time to interject but I once again stated that observers could not speak or participate after the meeting had been called to order. She then left saying "go for Obama". I heard of worst things happening at another precinct where people from the Obama preference group pulled unregistered observers into their group to increase their numbers.

Just too many ways for voter fraud to occur with a caucus. Time for NV to switch to a primary. Additionally, I agree with the previous bloggers that we need to provide every citizen of Nevada an opportunity to participate in their party's presidential candidate selection process and a primary is the only way to do that.