BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE
Sort of like the protagonist in “Orange is the New Black,” when the day finally arrived, I wasn’t ready. I was prepared. But turnout—that was the great unknown. As a volunteer, variously called Precinct Captain, Caucus Captain, and finally, Campaign Rep, for the Bernie Sanders campaign, I had tried to recruit volunteers and get my precinct thoroughly canvassed. I only recruited two volunteers, who were already involved anyway, one a condo neighbor and one who lived a street away and had a Bernie yard sign. My condo neighbor, Julie, did all of the phoning and the lion’s share of the door-knocking. So we had that, and a total of maybe a dozen caucus pledge cards signed. Julie and I went to the training in Saint Paul Monday night. Someone from another precinct caucusing at Roosevelt High had picked up “the bag” with our T-shirts and campaign materials, so I would have to find her first, then find my convenor, then wait for fate to deal my hand.
I arrived at Roosevelt about 5:30. The convenor arrived soon after. The doors were locked and the little warming space seemed crowded with 14 people waiting for the doors to be unlocked. Later that night, that little space would hold nearly 100, impeded solely by the press of bodies ahead of them. The hour between 6:45 and 7:45 was the worst. Mostly in that time, I would estimate that 3000 people crammed into the reception area, and about 80% of them did not know what precinct they were in, and were quite indignant that the caucus finder, and some of the cards people got in the mail, told them Roosevelt HS but not their ward and precinct numbers. (Actually the Caucus Finder does tell you, but not that you need to know that, which in the suburbs and countryside, you don’t.) We were hosting 8-8, 9-6, 12-5, 12-8, 12-9 and 12-12, that last one being mine and the second largest. There were maps of each precinct on the doors of the caucus rooms and one of each precinct on the pitifully understaffed “information table.” People at the back thought they would be registering when they got to that table. At some point, another campaign rep, who was also in my precinct, stood on the table and shouted information to the crowd: “If you know your ward and precinct you don’t have to come to this table. Here is a list of which room you should go to.” While he did that, maybe four or five of us campaign volunteers circulated through the crowd giving people directions to the various rooms.
Skip to a little after 8 o’clock. Everyone is through the doors, thank heavens. The up-and-down weather had decided to go down, so people who stood in a line snaking around to 29th Avenue were bitterly cold. There were lots of kids there, babies even, and quite a few elderly people. Now the bigger precincts had lines, indoors, for the actual registration and receiving of ballots. We ran out of ballots. About a third ended up being handwritten, a big no-no, but what could we do? The registration count for Ward 12, Precinct 12 was 507. The presidential ballot fell Sanders, 365, Clinton, 139. Most of the other precincts at Roosevelt were about the same. Nobody died. No ambulances came. I guess we were OK, despite the pain and grumbling.
I didn’t really get to caucus. I signed up to be a delegate afterwards, but missed everything. I was helping voters until the last ballot. Then my job as campaign rep kicked in—I had to watch the tellers counting and attest that it was fair. That wasn’t done until after 9 o’clock, and suddenly it was all over except for signing some forms. I—and my high-visibility lime yellow T-shirt saying Bernie’s Caucus Crew —went home and collapsed.
