Tonight, my wife and I attended the Democratic party precinct meeting, my first ever. The goals were to nominate precinct officers and pick delegates for the county meeting, who will elect a county chair and other county officers, and in turn name delegates for the district meeting for our Congressional district.

My neighbor, the new chair, came up with a brilliant idea. He sent everyone who had voted in every election since 2000 a special card saying that they’d earned a certficate for being reliable voters. A few people turned up just to get their certificates. Out of 2400 registered Democrats in our precinct (probably 95% of the registered voters in this precinct), almost 400 had voted in every election. About 800 voted for governor last November. Needless to say, turnout could improve.

Both my wife and I volunteered to be delegates for the county meeting. Our precinct gets one delegate for every 100 voters in the last gubernatorial election, so we got 8 delegates. There were about 12 people at the meeting, so everybody who wanted to be a delegate got to be one. We get to vote for the county chair, and will be choosing between someone who was involved in the Dean for America organization and someone who wasn’t. One of our neighbors who’s very involved supports the Dean guy (who I mentioned last week), and we’ll probably vote for him. Apparently we can look forward to getting calls or emails from both of them.