On Saturday, I’ll participate in my first Presidential caucus. Being that I’m uncomfortable jumping into totally unknown situations, I asked Josh, a caucus veteran, a few questions.

Me: Have you ever caucused before?

Josh: Yes, in 2004.

Me: What should I expect?

Josh: On Capitol Hill, a big auditorium at Seattle Central full of liberals. Maybe bagels if someone in your precinct is planning to try to lure people to support their candidate.

Me: Well, I’ll be in Fremont but I don’t imagine it’ll be much different.

Josh: In Fremont, I’d expect a bunch of die-hard Kucinich fans trying to cook up a way to allocate delegates to him even though he isn’t in the race. (Technically, I think there’s an option to elect “uncommitted” delegates.)

Me: Are there speeches?

Josh: Brief ones followed by discussion and voice votes for party platform issues. Then you’re split off into small groups corresponding to your precinct (probably a couple of blocks) for the actual voting and persuading portion of the show.

Me: How long does it last?

Josh: About an hour. When you arrive at the site, you sign in for your candidate of choice. Then there’s the big party plank portion of the event. Once you get into your small group, you divide yourselves into factions for each candidate. What you’re actually doing is electing delegates to go on to the legislative/county convention (who will then repeat the process and choose delegates for the congressional district, who will then repeat the process and choose delegates for the state, who will then repeat the process and choose the delegates for the National convention who go and stand under the balloons that fall from the sky and/or look on as a decision for the nominee is brokered.); so the precinct leader has to count everyone up and do some quick math to see how many delegates will be chosen for each candidate. If one candidate doesn’t have enough supporters to be viable, then they get a chance to realign. This is where the horse trading typically comes in, but since there are only two candidates it might be quicker this time than in 2004 when there were at least five democrats still in the race (Dean, Edwards, Kerry, Clark, Kucinich). Once the delegate counts are decided, you choose or harangue people into going to the county convention.

Me: Do I have to sign anything with a quill pen?

Josh: No. But you could bring your own for maximum effect.

Another question that Josh addressed without my asking is whether you have to be a registered Democrat to participate in the caucus. The answer is categorically no. You do not have to be a registered Democrat to participate in the caucus. However, if you professed allegiance to a party in Washington’s meaningless Primary, it is against the law to participate in a different party’s caucus.

Further, if you’re really gung ho and aspire to be a delegate at the National Convention in Denver, the Washington State Democratic party has this to say about it:

Fifty-one (51) delegates to the National Convention are elected at the Congressional District Caucuses held on May 15th. Additional delegates will be selected at the State Convention on June 13th and 14th in Spokane. Washington will send a total of 97 delegates to the National Convention.

It does not indicate whether they’ll pay for your trip. My guess, and please correct me if I’m wrong, is that you’re on the hook for those expenses.

Finally, if you’re planning to call the King County Democrats to determine where you should caucus on Saturday, expect to hear a busy signal. It took me 9 tries before I got through today. For a split second, the paranoid part of my brain thought the Republicans were jamming phones again [wiki]. However, it’s probably a lot less sinister than that.

Note: The reason I didn’t use the very handy Caucus Finder that Colin linked below [m-b] is because I recently moved and my old address is still in the system. So, if you’re in a similar situation, don’t panic if the phones are busy.

Update: In the comments, Cascadian pointed out that it’s not necessary to call and fight busy signals to find your caucus location. Instead, you can simply click over to the Washington State Democratic Chairs Organization and enter your address.