Irregularities?

While reading The Daily Dish this afternoon, I ran across a blog post from a Nevada Obama precinct captain that describes "irregularities" at his caucus site.

I link to it here not because I agree with it but because it did give me pause to think.

At my precinct, the caucus chair tried to close down registration at 11:30am despite the fact that my understanding of the rule is that anyone in line by noon was allowed to participate. I said something about it, he re-affirmed his position, and when I protested, he made a call and verified that I was right and allowed registration to continue.

In this particular case, however, I feel confident that it was a simple misunderstanding on his part.

I did, however, get a clear sense that the Clinton folks were using more aggressive tactics than we in the Obama camp were, and Victor and I were way outnumbered by the number of Clinton campaign operatives at our precinct.

I was focused on helping people get to their precincts' caucus sites or to stand in the right lines, as well as gathering up the Obama supporters as they came in. I tend to be pretty trusting, and I assumed that the Clinton people were doing the same, but they certainly could have been pressuring undecided caucus-goers as they arrived (when we did our initial count, there were fewer than five such individuals who hadn't yet chosen a candidate).

And when we got to the portion of the meeting when the Edwards' supporters (there were too few to meet the 15% threshhold for viability) and the undecideds had the opportunity to make a final selection, the Hillary camp ignored the caucus chair's direction to have only a single person represent their candidate (three took part, I was on my own). Still, I felt that the small group of people we were speaking to made their final choices freely and largely based on leanings that they arrived at the caucus with.

I know that many people had trouble finding where they were supposed to be (many precincts were gathering at Palo Verde High School); I blame that largely on the state Democractic Party (who had never organized such a large caucus event before). But it certainly was a situation that would enable unscrupulous campaign people to send caucus-goers supporting other candidates on wild goose chases.

So... sigh. I hope it isn't true that Hillary's campaign used such tactics on a widespread basis. In any case, my gut tells me there were more Hillary supporters than ones for Obama at my caucus site.

At least it looks like Obama has managed to win more delegates than Hillary, thanks to his strong showing in Reno and the rest of northern Nevada! CNN's Election Center now reflects this and shows Obama ahead 38 to 36 in the delegate race.