Tuesday, March 22, 2016

An Amateur Attempt at Politics



When I first got to the caucus meeting, I thought that I’d never get into the room I needed to be in. There were long lines of people waiting to vote, but most of them actually needed to change their registrations before they could vote. I’m not eligible to vote because I’m not an American citizen, but I stood in line with my roommate and we took about 30 minutes to get his wristband designating him as a registered voter.

The room for precinct 9 was packed full of people, and I had no idea what was going on in the front of the room. As I tried to figure out what was happening, I was handed a small sheet of paper that was to serve as my ballot. Some people were casually dropping names of people to vote for as they sneaked past the wall of people in the tiny classroom. I realized that they were voting on the delegates for the precinct. But I was confused because there were a few rounds of the what I thought was the same voting cycle. People seemed to randomly nominate people they knew as delegates.

In the last round, five delegates were nominated, but no vote was taken. I heard from some other people that we were nominating county delegates and we send five of them. We didn’t have to vote because we had exactly five nominees. Each one gave their little spiel on what they stood for. A lady in the audience asked that they say what their stance on abortion is. Each one made sure to say that they were against abortion. I was surprised at how easy it was to be nominated. All you needed, it seemed, was a friend and some charisma. At the end, the person in charge tallied and announced the number of votes for each Republican candidate.


As I thought about this, I couldn’t help thinking that the power is with the people. We are all amateurs trying to “fix” the government by voting for the next President of the United States. Not one voter knows how each candidate will turn out in the end, but most try to make an informed guess (or decision) about what the fate of the country will be like under the rule of a particular candidate. Even though voters aren’t experts at politicking, their attempt at politics has the power to influence society, whether or not that influence is good is a different story.

3 comments:

  1. I like your closing thoughts Adrian, and even though it was absolutely chaotic there last night, the amount of people really shocked and surprised me! We all brought forth our "widow's mite" in terms of voting with a sincere hope of one day electing a president that will make our country a better place.

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  2. Good job conveying emotions felt last night! I like how you were able to tie the political system into your class topic. Truly I am an amateur when it comes to politics. I don't know much about economics or policy yet I have the power to elect someone else based upon if I think their views "sound good" to me.

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  3. I like your perspective of explaining the confusion of the nights events. You are from another country yet at the caucus there was not explanation there was just assumptions that we should know what we should do. I felt that same way, without much guidance.

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