Courtney Malone

Dumped some photos into the gallery

Update 3/5 1:45pm - Apparently Denton county had a number of issues with delegate counts, I just got off the phone with our Chair, Gary, who said that our precinct was actually an exception in that we got nearly the right number of allotted delegates. The number assigned per precinct is based on turnout in the previous gubernatorial election. Right now, it appears that Denton county will just be dropping delegates from precincts that allocated too many in the order they were calculated in. This will actually change our precint Results to 16 for Obama 2 for Clinton, since the EZ Math sheet drops the person with the lowest remainder. Apparently 8% of Clinton’s votes came from Republicans. We still have the most votes, most states, and most delegates. cheer up

1:20 am - Wow, MSNBC shouldn’t let Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan stay up this late. looks like Texas was very close in popular vote and Obama will likely win the caucus vote. Though El Paso should prove interesting since its in Mountain Time. One last note:  I would do all of this again.

1:00 am - I get home to find that Obama has lost Texas and Ohio. It will be interesting to see whether he gets more delegates than Clinton in the caucus however. Sigh, is 1am too late to open a bottle of wine?

12:30 am – Done, I’m exhausted, and when we called the automated state Democratic party reporting system to enter the delegate count, we receive quite the shock: It claims our precinct only has 9 delegates. A few panicked calls later, we confirmed that our original number was correct; someone must have made a data entry error, as several other Denton county precincts had similar issues.

Midnight – We have elected and allocated our convention delegates, 16 for Obama, 3 for Clinton. I am one of them. The building manager boots us and one other precinct out of the building, the officers head over to the What-A-Burger to finish up the various sheets we have to sign and verify.

11:30 pm - Gary Page, our Precinct Convention Chair has some resolutions he wants voted on, they pass with near universal margins.

11:00 pm – We elect Convention Chair and Secretary. I am initially elected chair because of the work I did coralling people and getting lines setup to work the role sheets, I decline and endorse Gary, who has run for Senate twice and done the caucus 2 or 3 times before.  Work begins on the delegate allocation math sheets.

10:00 pm - The other captains and I are getting people lined up and verified and getting their preference declared on the roles.

9:30ish - Last voters have voted, we finally start trying to begin preparing to prepare for beginning caucusing ;-> IT IS UTTER CHAOS. We have well over a thousand people in the parking lot.

8:00 pm - The crowds gathered for caucusing are getting impatience

7:00 pm - Line cutoff reached, there are still more than a hundred people in line, caucusing cant begin for another 2 hours at least.

6:30 pm – Ohio polls closed. I get back to our precinct to find that it is absolutely slammed, people are everywhere, parking in all the nearby businesses.

6:00 pm - Returning to polling place to monitor close of polls and ensure everyone in line at 7pm gets a chance to vote. We already have isolated reports of HRC shenanigans in some places. MSNBC and CNN just called Vermont for Obama.

5:40 pm - Without individual precinct numbers we can’t tell which precincts over and under performed, which will make caucusing tonight difficult. But on the bright side, based on just conversations from this morning, we will have so many people returning for caucusing tonight that we will have to have the actual caucus out in a nearby parking lot. Certainly a very good problem to have.

4:00 pm - I’m going to veg out in front of MSNBC for a bit. I’M CHRIS MATTHEWS AND I CAN”T MODULATE THE TONE OF MY VOICE. Conversation with my friend and former housemate Chris:

[03:59:59:PM] Chrisbenar: your live blogging is hilarious
[04:00:04:PM] Chrisbenar: chris [different chris] said “just get a twitter”
[04:00:21:PM] me: im convinced no one outside of sf uses twitter
[04:00:57:PM] Chrisbenar: i’m convinced that you are gay for obama
[04:01:06:PM] Chrisbenar: and your delicious + your blog is proof of that
[04:01:10:PM] Chrisbenar: and now i can’t talk to you about politics

[04:01:18:PM] me: lol, why not
[04:01:46:PM] me: he’s not a god, i dont agree with him on everything, but i do firmly believe he is this best opportunity this country has had
[04:01:52:PM] me: in my lifetime at the very least
[04:02:11:PM] Chrisbenar: for what
[04:02:16:PM] Chrisbenar: he can’t change anything
[04:02:28:PM] Chrisbenar: i’m completely apathetic
[04:02:39:PM] Chrisbenar: Dr. Paul infected me with apathy
[04:02:42:PM] me: rofl

3:40 pm  – We now have 2 Obama supporters waving signs outside and a lone Clinton supporter has shown up. The polls are still busy, but much so less than this morning, I can actually get a parking space. Good news, Reuters says that Obama is up in Texas and has even developed a small lead in Ohio.

3:20 pm – Shift two poll check: Total number of Democrat ballots cast for precincts 205, 207, 210, 220 and 223: 668 (598 Optical Scan, 70 via eSlate)  There are substantially more poll workers now.

1:30 – 3:00 pm - Finished two more apartment complexes,and a couple of residential blocks. I am now out of both the nice door hangers and the rubber band tied collections of leaflets.

1:00 – 1:30 pm - Lunch (Jimmy John’s is awesome)

12:30 pm – Finished the second, much larger apartment complex, a surprising number of older people were home, most of whom had early voted, and voted for Senator Obama at that! Hrm, my.barackobama.com is overloaded apparently, but texasprecinctcaptains.com is still up.

Noon - Phoned County Coordinator with latest Democrat vote count. The polling station was still incredibly busy and the Election Judge was out to lunch, so they did not have precinct-by-precinct breakdowns. Our 2 poll workers were so busy I felt bad about bugging them for numbers. Total number of Democrat ballots cast for precincts 205, 207, 210, 220 and 223: 313 (275 Optical Scan, 38 via eSlate)

11:20 am – The next apartment complex is right next to mine, so I pop in to update this blog post; heading out to finish knocking on that complex.

11:00 am – Just finished door hangars/ door knocking in a nearby apartment complex. At this time of day few people are home, talked to an awesome elderly guy who voted early for Obama and says he will come to the caucus tonight. I have climbed 24 flights of stairs and I am by no means physically fit.

10:20 am – On my way out to do door knocking in my precinct I notice someone across the intersection from our polling place waving an Obama sign and the sidewalk next to her is lined with them, excellent, I pull over to talk, her name is Shirlyce, and she is fired up and ready to go.

8:00 – 9:45 am – Arrive at the staging office in Lewisville, where I phonebank with the other volunteers for bit. Something odd struck me; EVERY other volunteer there is female, and the scene is hilariously similar to a diversity poster, we have white, black, Indian, Hispanic, and Asian.

7:30 am – I got to cast my ballot (I didn’t vote early), then chuck it into the escan optical reader. By the time I leave, the line has stretched outside and has wrapped halfway around the building.

7:00 am – Polls open, I phone into to our County Campaign Coordinator, to let her know that the polls opened on time and everything seems ok.

6:45 am – Arrived at the polling station for our precinct and 4 others, there are already 15 people in line.

6:00 am – Get up, shower, get dressed. Apparently my storage server decided to kernel panic while I was asleep. It freaking snowed last night and now everything is covered in ice.