How I Saw Sam Gamgee And Became An Obama Math Wizard: A Texas County Convention

In the March 4 caucuses, our precinct on the outskirts of the UT campus had set itself up to send 28 delegates to the 8-hour spectacle that was today's Travis County Convention. 20 of those delegates were for Obama, while 8 were for Clinton. The delegate totals for the state convention, which then determines the national delegates, were to be determined by the presidential preference of people actually signing in at the county convention. So if you're wondering why it's been so hard to get official national delegate projections arising from the Texas caucuses, it's because there were so many more steps ahead that the party didn't feel comfortable with putting out projections.

The 8 long hours of the convention were seasoned by occasional speeches from local politicos and representatives of both the Obama and Clinton campaigns. The Obama folks focused more on bringing in local heroes like Kirk Watson and Ron Kirk, while the Clinton folks went big with Terry McAuliffe and Sean Astin, who seemed to be affecting a Texas accent at moments. He's actually from Santa Monica, California, so this was probably a bit of acting. I would've been more impressed if he'd done the whole thing in character as Sam Gamgee. Actually, I really wish he'd endorsed Frodo.

A wacky feature of the county convention is that if one candidate's supporters don't meet their full quota, opposing alternates are allowed to sub in for them. So it becomes important to not only bring enough delegates, but also to opportunistically bring alternates to steal unfilled slots.

Another wacky thing is that the county delegates get to pick most of the state delegates from among their number. Each delegate gets one vote, and the number of state delegates is equal to 1/12 the county delegates, rounding down. So our 28-person precinct got 2 state delegates and two alternates. (There are also at-large delegates, picked to fit the ratio from the convention sign-ins, which really determine the makeup of the state convention and thus the national delegates.) At a Thursday night house party, we picked our delegates. We expected that against 8 Clinton delegates, we'd take both delegate slots and the second alternate position with a 9O-9O-8C-2O split.

As it turned out, our precinct was surprisingly disorganized -- only 17 Obama delegates signed in at the county convention. I probably should've stepped up and played more of an organizational role so our delegates and alternates showed, but a boy in the throes of Edwards withdrawal doesn't usually expect that he'll have to do that. So we were looking at 9O-8O-8C. Ties are, believe it or not, settled by games of chance. So we'd flip a coin and end up with a 1-1 delegation plus an Obama alternate, or a 2-0 delegation plus a Clinton alternate.

"But what about the second alternate spot in that scenario?" you ask. Or maybe you don't. But I certainly did, and I realized that with all Clinton and Obama votes expended, an n-way tie for 4th between people with 0 votes was in the offing. So the thing to do was to nominate as many people as possible and not vote for them, so Team Obama would stuff the game of chance for the fourth position with its delegates, and have a high probability of taking the second alternate slot. Together with the woman who had stepped into the leadership vacuum of our precinct, I set us up to nominate everyone able to attend the state convention. (I can't -- I'll be visiting family in San Francisco.) If you've ever enjoyed implementing a mathematical strategy with actual human agents, you can imagine the fun I had for the next couple hours as I set everybody up to run the plan.

As it turned out, the plan wasn't even needed -- the Clinton side showed up with only 6 delegates. I don't know what the problem was -- they had a paid Clinton staffer on their side who should've gotten them together better. At the end, she was quite upset about how she'd neglected to contact her alternates, both to top up her delegation and to steal three votes from ours. Don't know how she neglected to do that. So we ended up going 7O-7O-6C-3O, and then leaving the convention hall as fast as we could with all our work done.

Comments

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Can I just say that this whole process appears to be totally insane? Like, it's somehow more insane than the Iowa caucuses???

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

And I can't tell who's gonna win. Obama's basically at 60-40 with 60% of the vote counted once you add in Tarrant county. If Clinton wins the rest of the state 66-33, it's a tie. But I have no sense of how the rest of the state will go ... basically there have to be enough ties or narrow wins in East Texas and the Hill Country to offset North Texas and the Border counties. But Clinton could take big chunks of this 100-0. It's a tough call.

[Stephen]

Caucuses are really dumb.

Note: The above statement does not imply an endorsement of Hillary Clinton, her campaign or any candidate surrogate - "candidate surrogate" being defined as any person who has any connection to a candidate no matter how distant, or any person at all who can be quoted as saying something which will backfire upon the candidate. Nor does the above statement suggest agreement, substantial or otherwise, with any statements made by Hillary Clinton, her campaign, or campaign surrogates as defined above.

[ikl]

Even if they keep the caucus system, they really have to abolish the 3 tiered system. It makes some sense for Iowa since some candidates might be viable for the first round, but might drop out later. But for later states like Texas it is really kind of crazy. Just allocate delegates based on the first round (some states actually do this). Actually, I tend to doubt that caucuses are a good idea in urban states at all. They make more sense in places where people are likely to know their neighbors. But for Texas, Nevada, Colorado, etc. I'm not sure that I see the point.

Thanks for the report though!

[ikl]

Nicholas, I'm not certain, but I think that Obama's got it. Parts for Bexar are outstanding, but I don't think that that goes 2-1 for Clinton. And Colin is outstanding as well - should go for Obama. Clinton would have to win the rest 2.5-1 or 3-1. I don't think that that will happen. Too much left in East Texas where Obama is competitive and some of the sparsely populated places in West Texas will be quirky.

[ikl]

Oh, and Jefferson (Obama country), Guadalupe, Charokee and Jasper (these three are Obama leaning parts of East Texas). I don't see Obama losing the lead. And that is important, because as I understand things, there are 3 add-on delegates to be decided by the state convention, so the winner gets a significant bonus.

[ikl]

Oh and Tarrant County (how could I miss this!) which leans Obama, with over 500 delegates outstanding. I'm calling this for Obama!

[Matt Weiner]

Actually, I really wish he'd endorsed Frodo.

Dude, Kucinich dropped out.

[JMG]

This was a most enlightening post, but you left out one detail us out-of-staters want to know.
The person who thought up the Texas Democratic rules, how is he or she doing in rehab?

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

You know, I didn't fully appreciate the sheer bizarreness of the 3-tiered, game-of-chance-involving, transportation-requiring clusterfuck until you all brought it up. I was just looking at it from the inside and thinking, "Okay, how do we win this thing?"

But you're all totally right. This is sheer madness.

[Nicholas Beaudrot]

Though I would have paid good money to hear you try to explain your "get more ping-pong balls in the lottery" to your fellow caucus goers.

[Neil the Ethical Werewolf]

That part was really fun! It helped that our precinct is mostly college students, so they were able to understand what was going on with a little explanation.

It was also fun to see 10 of them all nominate each other -- we actually went through and did that. I can't tell if the Hillary people knew what was going on, though they were a little annoyed with us. Someone told me that the Hillary folks found out our strategy, but even if they'd copied it it would've been better than nobody knowing the strategy, because we had more possible ping-pong balls than them.