Beth Pearlman | Posted 11:49 p.m. Feb. 5
Caucus veterans say they've never seen anything like it: even before the doors opened at 6 p.m., traffic jams, overflowing hallways and bewildered voters were welcomed Minnesota caucus night 2008.

Apparently the Inver Grove Heights police department did not anticipate rock-concert level attendance because traffic police did not show up until around 7:30 to help clear the gridlock.

State House Representative Rick Hansen estimated the total crowd in the southern suburban caucus to be about 3,000. Four years ago he said it hovered around 700. He theorized that "people are hungry for change."

This was a first caucus for most of the people streaming into Simley High School, location for all the caucuses in the single state house district.

Most came not knowing what to expect, and left not quite knowing exactly what hit them. The hallways were jammed with voters jockeying for position near the huge wall maps, trying to figure out which of the classrooms held their precinct's caucus.

Mine was in the cafeteria, on the far side of the building. Everyone was sprinting to get to their rooms before 8 pm, before the closing of the presidential straw poll, which was the big draw of the night. The unexpected traffic jams outside made for a frustrated and worried bunch inside, eager to cast those votes for Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton or someone else.

I knew I was in the right place when I walked into the cafeteria and saw quite a few of my neighbors. That was fun – in Minnesota's winter you don't see a lot of your neighbors until the snow melts.

To the relief of the crowds in the classrooms, shortly before 8 p.m. the announcement came that the presidential poll would stay open for another 15 minutes to accommodate those caught in traffic.

The organizer of my precinct said in previous years they usually get about 50 voters. They were told to expect double that tonight. In fact, almost 200 people voted in this one caucus room, and this was just one of 32 caucuses in this one high school building.

More than half of those who attended left right after casting their presidential vote. In the end, everyone got to cast a ballot, actually a piece of scrap paper folded and handed to a woman who put it inside a large envelope.

No, they didn't run out of official ballots. This was it – these torn pieces of notebook paper were the "official" ballots. And it was a good thing I brought my own pen, there were none to spare. Things were pretty informal.

They were so informal, in fact, that there was quite a bit of confusion about exactly how to select delegates who will advance to the next level of party conventions. My precinct received 27 slots.

In my cafeteria caucus those running the event finally corralled the group and got down to business. The first order is to elect precinct officers. Then anyone who wants to introduce a resolution does so. And they did.

We heard and voted on a dozen resolutions on issues ranging from universal health care to creating incentives for small businesses to eliminating the "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. Some sponsors spoke in support of their proposals, others just wanted the room to vote right away.

Some of the other caucus rooms offered proposals on very local issues like keeping a local senior housing project open, to others you don't hear about much, like resolving to prohibit the privatization of the post office.

By this time the counting had been completed on the presidential poll in our room. The tally for Precinct 2, District 39A was: 92 for Barak Obama, 78 for Hillary Clinton, 1 for John Edwards and 1 for Dennis Kucinich.

The attendees had dwindled from almost 200 at its peak to about 100 who voted on resolutions and, by the end, the group dwindled to only about 70.

But the most serious business of the night for the political parties was just coming -- selecting the delegates. This is where issues and senate preference come into play. During the past weeks, each of the major Democratic senate candidates had recruited precinct members to act as leaders during the caucuses, to round up support trying to garner the most delegates. This process is called the "walking subcaucus"

One Al Franken for Senate loyalist stood up and called for all Franken supporters to gather around her. On another side of the room Senate candidate Mike Ciresi partisans formed a smaller group. A handful of people moved to the far end of the room to support Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer and a few souls stood for "undecided," hoping to get a spot as delegate to be courted in the April convention.

After a little jockeying to get some stragglers to join one or the other group, one person with a calculator did the math to figure out the proportional representation for each candidate.

This walking subcaucus was a lot more confusing in person than the YouTube "training video" I had seen (produced by the Franken campaign) but it turned out in the end.

With 27 total delegates to assign, Franken got 16, Ciresi got 8, Nelson-Pallmeyer got 2 and undecided got one. So the chair recorded the names and numbers of those who wanted to be delegates or alternates, and the night ended with a whimper as people said goodbye to their neighbors and trickled out into the hallways.

By 8:30 most of the caucuses were over, though some had so many resolutions and speakers they lasted past 9 p.m. The tallying in the hallway was just about complete by 9:30 with the unofficial results showing Obama getting about 60 percent to Clinton's 40 percent in this one suburban Minnesota High School.

Mendota Heights voter, Amy Eilberg summed up her first time caucus experience by saying that despite the confusion, it was gratifying to be part of democracy in action. She quoted Winston Churchill, "It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried."