My husband and I got to our caucus location at 6 pm (line forms 6 pm, registration begins 6:30, caucus starts at 7 ... so they thought).
It was held in a small church in downtown Olathe. When we pulled up there was a line but not much of one (we thought). As we stood there the line started stretching down the sidewalk about 4 blocks long ... we found out later we were at the BACK entrance ... the front entrance had a line 6 or 7 blocks long. They had tables set up to process those already registered and one set up to register new voters and those switching parties, like my husband (he's an independent). The registered tables were empty. The new voter/switching parties table was mobbed. About 7 pm, the organizers came over the PA saying they usually have about 80 people show up to caucus, they had PLANNED this year to have about 600 show, the total number that actually CAME was around 2000. Obviously, the tiny church we were in couldn't hold everyone and the police made them move the caucus. The only place to move everyone was to an open-air square adjacent to the nearby county courthouse. So all 2000 of us booked it out to the square and stood in the rain, freezing rain, sleet, snow. It took about 2 hours to process all the new registrations -- and everyone previously registered had to stand outside and wait until ALL the participants were registered before they could begin counting. They organized us into lines stretching down the middle of the square. Hillary's line was single file and was about a third of the square long. Obama's line was rows of five that stretched from one end of the square to the other, across the street, up the courthouse steps, and even into the courthouse itself. The amazing thing was, despite standing there wet, freezing, and miserable -- NO ONE LEFT! There was lots of complaining and bitching, but everyone stuck it out, including groups of what looked like high school/college age students who were having the time of their lives, yelling and screaming for Obama like they were at a rock concert. It was definitely chaos on a massive scale. At the end I think I heard the count was 3 to 1 Obama. Apparently, this scenario was pretty standard all across the Kansas side of the city. Oh, and my husband and I were on the news, which was pretty neat. They had all kinds of news crews filming the craziness ... we turned on the news when we got home (finally!) and there we were, holding up our hands to be counted. All in all, another experience I won't ever forget. -----Original Message----- From: Gruss Gott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, February 05, 2008 8:15 PM To: CF-Community Subject: Super Tuesday MADNESS! HOLY CRAP! I just got back from my primary caucus site and I've never seen more people, even for voting for president! Traffic was backed up for miles, the site was total madhouse - near anarchy - and I'm guessing that for every primary vote there were 5 that would've been had it been easier. They ran out of ballots and were using the back of high school bathroom passes with your vote tossed into a manila envelope. Audit that. Wow, just wow. Absolute craziness. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Adobe® ColdFusion® 8 software 8 is the most important and dramatic release to date Get the Free Trial http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;160198600;22374440;w Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/message.cfm/messageid:253415 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/CF-Community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=11502.10531.5
