Lorlee Bartos: The Luckiest Precinct Chair in Town
Bartos is a long-suffering FrontBurnervian and an East Dallas activist. Good people. She tells us a great story about something funny that happened to her on the way to Whole Foods:
I was mostly minding my own business on my way to Whole Foods when I thought I would just stop by my precinct and at least sign in for Hilary. So there I am at 6:45 — chatting with a new neighbor. I am about the 25th person in line, with the line continuing to grow behind me.
7 pm arrives. There are no voters in line, so we expect they will open the door and let us in to start signing in for the caucus. The line is now about 75 people. My lovely new neighbor and I are am having a nice chat about the recent burglaries, her blues magazine and exchanging cards. At 7:15, the doors are still closed. The line is down the block and around the corner. So another neighbor and I go to the door to inquire and to say that they are supposed to be signing people in. Whereupon the election judge says she can’t sign people in and that she is waiting for the precinct chair, whose name is on the sheet.
Surprise, surprise — it is MY name. Holy Crap. I am only here on happenstance, with my grocery list in my pocket.
So I look over the materials quickly — set up two tables and start signing people in. I go out and annouce that I will be starting the caucus and announce that in order to speed things along, I am going to trust that they have voted and just sign people in without checking the voter book. There are an Obama operative and a Clinton operative who object that this isn’t procedure and that they are going to be calling their lawyers. My reply: “You just go right ahead and do that.” The Obama guy wanted to call a point of order — which I ignored since he isn’t a voter in this precinct and I don’t think he has standing to do it. At the height, we had about 10 sheets going at once — getting the basic info — name, address, voter certificate if they had it or driver’s license and presidential preference. We didn’t bother with checking the under-35, gay, etc. boxes at the end of the sheet. Heck, with 2-point type, we couldn’t read them. By now, the Clinton and Obama guys have decided this is the best they are going to get and decide to helpful and forget calling their lawyers.
207 people signed in. 158 for Obama, 59 for Clinton. I appointed the Clinton and Obama guys to count figuring they would keep each other honest. 18 delegates for Obama and 6 for Clinton.
A permanent chair was elected, thankfully not me. 23 people wanted to be delegates for Obama and 7 for Clinton, so everyone could go as either a delegate or an alternate. I left at 8:40 and never did get to Whole Foods.
So how do we think this happened? Well, two terms ago, I was the precinct chair. Didn’t sign up the last two terms, though I did run an election about a year ago. Got a card asking if I wanted to run the election this year and declined. There was a letter last week that I sent directly to the recyling bin since I knew I had declined the opportunity to run the election.
Had I decided not to stop by, 206 people might still be waiting in line at St. Luke’s Church.
So I guess you should read your mail — or the Democratic Party ought to believe me when I don’t sign up to be precinct chair.
6 Comments to “Lorlee Bartos: The Luckiest Precinct Chair in Town”
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Um…good job?
Lorlee (who I agree is good people) writes: “I go out and annouce that I will be starting the caucus and announce that in order to speed things along, I am going to trust that they have voted and just sign people in without checking the voter book.”
Based on that management decision, it is entirely possible that people (untold numbers) who didn’t vote in the primary nonetheless participated in the post-primary caucus without authority to do so. The motivation to do this is clear: to garner delegates for their preferred candidate. I’m just sayin’…..
Never fear — virtually everyone had either a yellow slip, a blue paper or their voter card with a stamp on it.
And quite frankly, if the party cares, they can go back and check them against the poll books.
There were 207 people who had taken the time to come out — and the little old people in my neighborhood wouldn’t have a clue how to game the system.
And knowing my neighborhood, the 18/6 split is what I would have expected.
Gee if the Democrats can’t run a precinct caucus how can we expect them to run the country.
I’m delighted, once again, to see that Lorlee found her way into the caucus, an affair that we know too well up here on the Far Side of North Nowhere. In fact, if I recall correctly, Lorlee attended her first caucus hereabouts in 1968 — a pitched winner-take-all show-down between Hubert Humphrey and Gene McCarthy.
Like her, I ended up as the Ice Lake precinct caucus chair much the same way and the split about the same. Our great entertainment, however, was the spat between supporters of Al Franken –Liars, and the Lies they Tell — who is running for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate. Which is something akin to the late Molly Ivins running for the Senate. Mind you that Molly did a three year stint at the Minneapolis Tribune when and where I was a rookie reporter who taught me a bit about Texas politics in the way, I hope, Lorlee brought a bit of Minnesota into the caucus. I for one wish she’d be up here again taking charge.
Patrick Marx, publisher of the Ice Lake Leader, and long ago Bartos’ classmate at UMM.
Point of inquiry…how does it happen that someone is a precinct chair and does not know it? I only ask because no precinct chair was present for our caucus so we had to spend some time determining how to proceed…etc. It was an exciting night but rather disorganized.