Flashes of Panic

Massachusetts had its primaries months ago now, but yesterday the parties held caucuses to determine exactly who the delegates would be. A running-club friend of ours was hoping to be a delegate for my candidate, so I walked over to the College (where the caucus would be held in the old gym) and asserted that yes, I was registered with this party in this congressional district. (I voted in the local elections on Tuesday.)

A process which is obscure to me—I assume it happened at the state committee level—determined that we would select one male and two female delegates. The candidates had two minutes to make their pitch before we voted. After the five men spoke (one of them essentially asking people to vote for one of the others, not him) and we voted, the women spoke while the men’s votes were counted.

We did some quick arithmetic on the men’s tallies and determined that there were 98 people voting, a pretty small number considering the size of the district (and that this caucus was for the top vote-getter in the district in either party). After the four women spoke, we were instructed to write two names on our ballots; in response to questions, it was clarified that we could not vote twice for the same person, we could write just one name if we wished, and if we had two ballots (some people did) they could write one on each ballot.

As the votes were being counted, someone asked for more clarification about the process, and it was announced that any delegate must gain a majority to be selected; if nobody gained a majority, the lowest vote-getter would be taken out of the pool and we’d go again. This sounded fine, but then when the results were announced, they claimed that nobody had a majority. The totals were announced, however, and one of the women had 72 votes. Our friend was second with 46. (N.B. I may be mis-remembering these votes by a few, but I do have them within two or three.)

There were some murmurs, and I raised my hand. The moderator nodded to me, and I said, “It sounds to me like one of the candidates does have a majority. Unless there are over 144 of us voting, 72 should be enough.” At this point the parliamentarian stood up, glared at me, and said, “The candidates need a majority of votes cast,” or something along those lines.

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “We were instructed not to vote twice for the same person. Even if we all voted for the same candidate, it would be impossible for anyone to get more than half the votes.”

(In hindsight, it would be possible if enough people only voted for one candidate, but this still doesn’t invalidate my assertion that this is a poor way to vote.)

I’m still not sure the parliamentarian understood the simple arithmetic involved, but he was mollified when someone offered to check the actual rules. The printed rules arrived to a round of applause, and it was determined that, in fact, a majority of voters, not votes, was required. It was still unclear exactly how many people had voted in that first round, but everyone seemed to accept that it wasn’t more than 140, and this candidate (who happened to be a sophomore(!) at the University) was elected to some applause.

Then we set to the second round, where we got one name per ballot, one ballot per voter. If none of the remaining three attained a majority, any candidate with less than 15% of the vote would be taken off the list and we’d do another round. That was, in fact, what happened, and our friend eventually lost on the third ballot, with her numbers declining with every round. (Hopefully not because of the loudmouth sitting behind her.) Her husband was doing the figures on the announced vote totals from the second round, though, and he figured there might have been few enough voters (i.e. fewer than 92) in the first round that her 46 would’ve constituted a majority then. We shrugged at each other, and headed home.

The local campaign is organizing volunteers to car-pool to Pennsylvania in the coming weeks to work for the primary there. I find this amusing both because Pennsylvania didn’t have a primary that meant anything in the five years I lived there, and because they’re actually going to my old area, working out of the Allentown headquarters. I’ll be in Boston that weekend, however.

Now Playing: Over-Ground from Into the West by Pilot Speed

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