Just think, if Gladys entered the race she’d have the woman/African American/Mormon factors all rolled into one! Plus The Pips could be cabinet members. Sweet.

Last Tuesday I participated in the Democrat caucus in MN so I could throw my support behind Obama. As we walked in the school where the caucus was being held, I was surprised to see signs everywhere and I mean everywhere for Obama and workers wearing buttons promoting Obama. I heard this was common at other locations as well, either for Obama or Hillary.

The process was writing down my name and address and then I was given a blank golden square of paper to write my presidential candidate on. I then took the “ballot” to a different table and put it in a box. That table also had a hat on it that people were putting money in. From across the room, I commented to my boyfriend, “Wtf? Is that for bribes?” As we got to that table, I saw that it was for donations for the DFL (the Democrat party in MN).

The whole process was unsecure and had a high potential for fraud, imo. It reinforced to me that I should remain registered Indepenedent.

From what I hear, some other states have similar caucuses. That’s demoralizing.

Well, not really. Mostly it was great fun to work at the polls, but there were times…

I just don’t understand why people can’t get it through their head that they can’t just stroll into the polling place and start talking about who they’re going to vote for. I understand the ones who are doing it for a partisan reason…they’re just jerks. They know the law and try to flaunt it on purpose.

The ones that bother me are the ones who aren’t really ideological but try to throw the First Amendment at you when you ask them to refrain from talking about the candidates or issues by saying that it is a violation of their free speech rights to stop them from talking. A couple of times it got so bad that I had to remind them, none too gently, that as inspector, I had the authority to call the police and have them removed from the polling place, that that if they didn’t shut up, I would do so.

I also had to fight with poll watchers a couple of times when they would come around to see who had voted and who hadn’t. One in particular insisted that they could keep the street index for as long as they wanted, even though that meant that people coming to vote couldn’t check it to make sure that they were at the right precinct.

We’ve only just begun! Let’s do this!!