From the Caucus: Insane Turnout
Tue, 03/04/2008 - 7:53pm
Our actual precinct caucus just began. There's still hundreds of people here.
Update (8:22PM) People are still streaming in from a seemingly never-ending line out the door and around the block, all to caucus. There's shouting and traffic direction and just more people than I've ever seen at a Democratic function in Denton County, ever, and this is just a small collection of precincts.
The last two times I attended my precinct caucus (the second step in the Texas Two Step, for our national readers), there were 4 people there each time, and two of those were my and my wife. I went to my polling place about a half an hour ago, and there were still over 100 people in line just to vote, as well as several hundred people in and around the church. There was no place to park. We had to walk two blocks from a grocery store.
Patrick and I are both getting several reports from all over Texas that this is happening everywhere. Hundreds upon hundreds of people, showing up to caucus, massive lines of people waiting to vote. There can't possibly be good results from this for days. The caucuses haven't even started yet because of all the people, and we are 30 minutes passed when they are supposed to begin.
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pct 135
By John McClelland
Wed, 03/05/2008 - 11:08am
Little Elm was the scene of insanity. 2 Little Elm and 5 Frisco precincts were sharing space with 2 GOP precincts at the Town Hall.
I arrived at 6:30pm and there was already a sizeable line of caucus goers. Later in the evening it eventually snaked around several times with hundreds of Democrats there.
My pct 135 had 200+ attendees and was the largest of those present. What made me happy to see was that 99% of them were African American. And for my own personal bias, even happier when just as many of them were there for Obama. That lead to our delegate split being 18 for Obama and 3 for Clinton.
The bad parts are of course the fact 7 precincts were in such a small location. Turnout made that the mistake we did not see coming. It also put a strain on the Little Elm Police & Fire, who by the way did a stellar job of controlling the situation. Also some voters did not get an opportunity to vote due to the traffic, either turning around or getting there too late. The 2 lane El Dorado could not handle the influx.
116
By George Nassar
Wed, 03/05/2008 - 12:24pm
Sounds a lot like how we went with the north Denton and Sanger precincts. We had 7 or 8 precincts in a Sanger church. It was crazy crowded. I was running around from precinct to precinct answering rules questions the entire evening. It was madness. I'm pretty sure nobody expected that kind of turnout, even with the ridiculously high early voting numbers.