This is for those of you in primary states who have never seen a caucus. Hope you enjoy the report; I just got back.
I voted on the University of Colorado campus (I'm a professor, and I live in the on-campus faculty housing). There are four precincts, each one having about 100 people. (99 were in my precinct.) The woman running it said per-precinct turnout is usually about 25. Almost everyone there was a student. As someone who's tried organizing on campus before, it's surprising and encouraging that turnout was so strong.
People were showing up at 6 pm, and all the chairs were full by about 6:30. The caucus began at 7:00. Most people were supporting Obama. Even a lot of the organizers and volunteers had Obama T-shirts, and there were signs for him all over. A few Clinton supporters were around as well. It seemed strange, especially since I'm much more used to primary states, where the law is that no campaigning can happen closer to 50 feet to the polls.
Shortly before the caucus began, free pizza was being passed out. One of the boxes had Obama's name on it, so that it looked almost like a buying of votes. Maybe I'm being too technical, but it was a turnoff. A few years ago, there was a controversy over a campaign buying cigarettes for its supporters, so I know the law is pretty strict about this sort of thing.
For half an hour, people gave speeches supporting various candidates. Most of them were students, but a few professors spoke as well. There were supporters of Obama and Clinton; Udall for Senate (who is not quite unopposed; he has a fringe candidate running against him); Fitz-Gerald, Polis, and Shafroth running for Udall's House seat; and a couple of State Senate candidates. Despite being told that we were voting for all of these positions, only the Presidential election actually seemed to matter.
Finally we split up into different rooms for the precinct discussions. In my precinct, there were 17 Clinton supporters, 80 Obama supporters, and two uncommitted. (I joined Obama's side.) One of the uncommitted people was a single-issue voter, who said she was undecided because nobody was appealing to her over Darfur. I thought it was strange that a single-issue voter wouldn't know the difference between two Presidential candidates on election day. Nothing we said would convince her, and so she remained uncommitted. (I guess she made her stand though.)
Clinton just barely reached the viability threshold, so she got one delegate, and Obama got three. Then it was time to actually choose the delegates who would represent our precinct in Boulder County's convention (whose job was to choose delegates for the state convention). We had six delegates to choose (three primary, and three alternate). About a quarter of the people there started leaving after the first Presidential vote.
I ran for delegate, because I'd never done something like it before. Seven people ran in all; five young students, me, and an older guy who was a returning student. So we had to have an election within our Obama-supporting group. We were all basically supporting the same candidates, except for one student who was against a State Senate candidate because the student was strongly against her single-payer health care plan.
Somehow I got the most votes. It was pretty cool to go stand in a corner and have people gather around me to support me. The other older guy got the second most votes, and all the students got 1, 2, or 3 votes. So there was a runoff for the third primary delegate. (Almost everybody voted against the single-payer hater.) Finally, with the last alternate delegate to be chosen, we agreed to just flip a coin between the two students who had each gotten one vote.
Strangely, nobody really discussed the other elections. As delegate candidates we announced who we'd support for those elections, and we mostly happened to agree, but there wasn't a serious discussion about it.
As everyone was leaving, a couple came up to me to ask me to represent their views on health care. They were pretty much against Clinton (claiming that her plan was identical to Romney's, and that she didn't subsidize the poor to pay for coverage; I challenged both claims). It was kind of strange to feel like a politician, trying to address someone's concerns without pandering.
Fun times.