Caucus Troubles: Three Precincts In Tarrant County Won’t Count

In spite of crippling lines and some confusion, most precinct conventions across the state went off without a hitch last Tuesday night. However, there are a number of glaring examples of why the process–at minimum–needs some serious tweaking. Check out what happened in Tarrant County, where three precincts essentially didn’t hold legitimate conventions for various reasons:

Hundreds of people were crammed into the tiny cafeteria at Atherton Elementary School in Arlington on Tuesday night.

They waited there, shoulder to shoulder, at precinct caucuses for more than two hours to declare their support for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for president. People who attended said the mood grew heated as participants lost confidence in whether their votes would be counted.

They had every reason to worry. The Tarrant County Democratic Party confirmed Friday that it had received envelopes with blank forms for all three precinct caucuses at the school.

“At this point, we don’t have any record that anything happened there,” said Keith Annis, the county party’s executive director.

No sign-in sheets

The Arlington school served three precincts: 2027, 2235, and 2461.

At 6:30 p.m., people started gathering for the caucuses in the school’s cafeteria. Around 7:30 p.m., the last person in line voted in the primaries, and the caucuses were ready to begin, said Keith Andrews, who had spent the entire day outside the school campaigning for Clinton.

Andrews had attended a precinct training set up by the Clinton campaign. He had also studied the rules of precinct caucuses. After learning that there was no precinct caucus chairman, Andrews volunteered.

“I knew from the training that any qualified voter at that point can take the packets and be the temporary chair,” Andrews said.

Andrews’ job was to have everyone from his precinct enter their names and candidate preferences on sign-in sheets. Two other people agreed to be chairmen for the other two precinct caucuses.

“It was a massive crowd, so we were shouting over all the noise and everything to try and tell people where to split into groups,” Andrews said.

The three chairmen opened up their packets to find there were no sign-in sheets inside.

Calling the campaigns

None of them knew what to do. Andrews didn’t have a number for the local party. He did have one for the local Clinton campaign office. A lawyer there told him someone would be there with sign-in sheets within an hour.

Andrews jumped onto a cafeteria table and told the crowd the situation. Many were unhappy to learn that the Clinton campaign had gotten involved, he said.

“The crowd was highly agitated and it was being focused on me because I was the only one speaking,” Andrews said.

Soon, Andrews said, someone thrust a cellphone in his face. A man who said he was a lawyer with the Obama campaign told Andrews that any piece of paper filled out properly could be accepted as a legally binding sign-in sheet.

Andrews got back up on the table to tell everyone the good news. To his surprise, the crowd didn’t like the sound of that either. Apparently anyone associated with either campaign was viewed as untrustworthy.

“I decided at that point I was poison to these people so I stepped down,” Andrews said.

Just before 9 p.m., with the crowd still fumbling toward a solution, Andrews left before his precinct caucus began. He said he was worried for his safety.

“I just didn’t need someone taking out their frustration out on me,” he said.

‘No convention’

Clarence Christopher had waited more than two hours in the Atherton Elementary cafeteria. He and his wife, both lifelong Democrats, didn’t understand what was causing the delay. All they knew was that the people in charge didn’t seem to know what they were doing.

“It was just the most disorganized thing I’ve ever seen,” Christopher said.

Around 9 p.m., after Andrews and dozens of others had left, someone told everyone in the room to line up by precinct.

“They got a piece of notebook paper and you walked by there and you told them who you voted for and what precinct,” Christopher said. He noticed that the people running his precinct caucus weren’t taking down names, just presidential preferences.

The Christophers, who said they had read about what to expect from the caucus, said they left the school thinking the results would not be accepted. Annis said those pieces of notebook paper would likely have been ruled ineligible even if they had been submitted.

Packets for precincts 2027, 2235, and 2461 were dropped off at the Tarrant County Democratic Party headquarters in Fort Worth this week. None of them had sign-in sheets. The volunteers processing the packets followed their instructions and wrote “NO CONVENTION” in marker on each envelope.

I can’t say this comes as much of a surprise. It is also a reason why county parties should have made sure someone trained by the party and not one of the campaigns was present in every precinct in order to hold these conventions.

Of course, it will probably take until a meeting of the Credentials Committee at the State Convention for all of this mess to be sorted out.

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