Complex primary process proves no hurdle for eager Texas voters
AUSTIN, Texas - Democrats around the country have fought over whether to nominate their presidential candidates through wide-open primaries or party-dominated caucuses, but party leaders in Texas kept one of each, creating a gawky hybrid that specialists say may be the most unwieldy and confusing method used anywhere in the country.
"When there is low turnout, people just say, 'This is the way it's done in Texas' and don't care so much," said Harry B. Cook, vice president at InfoVoter Technologies, which administers a nonpartisan voter-information hotline in conjunction with the NAACP National Voter Fund.
"But this year, with the number of people who are energized and care about the outcome, it's creating a lot of stress for people as they cast their votes."
It is hard to find anyone in Texas politics willing to describe themselves as an expert in the multistage process, which is known alternately as the "primacus" or "primacaucus" or "Texas Two-Step."
For 10 days ending Friday, all Texans - the state does not require them to register by party - were able to cast a secret primary ballot at designated sites within their county. For 12 hours on Tuesday, those who did not vote early will be able to do so at their neighborhood polling place.
Then, 15 minutes after the polls close on Tuesday, anyone who voted in the Democratic primary will be able to go to that polling place - which, if they participated in early voting, is probably an entirely different location - and participate in a caucus known as a precinct convention. Delegates will be allocated separately from each process.
"I had no idea how bizarre it is," said Hillary Clinton, who otherwise brags about her familiarity with the arcana of Texas politics. "We have grown men crying over it."
The system, designed by Democratic leaders in the 1970s to maintain party control over selection of their nominee, gives the inadvertent appearance of being built specifically to Obama's strengths, according to operatives.
"His folks have just mastered process," said Keir Murray, a Democratic consultant in Houston. "There's no comparison between the level of organization of the two campaigns."
About midday last Wednesday, two dozen Obama volunteers took seats at his Houston headquarters to be trained as precinct captains, one of a series of sessions taking place at campaign offices across the state. The first session for the Obama campaign in Houston drew 700 people, according to an aide.
"Have any of y'all ever caucused in Texas?" Gillian Bergeron, a deputy field director for Obama, asked the volunteers, some of them committed Democratic activists. Only two raised their hands.
"You're going to walk out of here as some of the best-educated people on the primacaucus, as we call it," Bergeron assured them. "It's strange, but true."
Bergeron explained that 126 delegates would be awarded according to the primary results, but that it was important to remind voters to show up early for the nighttime caucus, where another 67 delegates would be up for grabs.
A young woman raised her hand. "Is there a list of rules from the caucus?" she asked.
"Is there ever!" Bergeron said. "There's a book of rules."
The rules run to 11 pages, in fact, including such helpful information as the "(P + V) divided by 2" formula by which primary delegates are allocated, which may be why a coterie of union organizers standing outside Obama's headquarters during the training session joked that anyone who could understand how the caucus worked deserved a graduate degree.
The complexity of the process does not appear to have discouraged Texas voters from taking the first step.
Participation in the early-voting period is setting turnout records statewide; some counties have experienced a fivefold increase over the 2004 Democratic primary.
"You're going to have a list of people you need to get out to vote, and half a list of people you need to vote again," Cook said. "That's going to split the get-out-of-the-vote operation."
Allocation of resources is a particular worry in a large state where primary delegates are split up along the lines of state Senate districts. Each district is assigned between one and eight delegates, weighted according to its performance for the last Democratic candidate for governor and president, which tends to empower districts in college towns and largely African-American areas where Obama is expected to run strongest.
The allocation scheme disadvantages districts with growing Hispanic populations, swing voters who have not been a reliable source of Democratic votes in recent statewide, and federal elections, analysts say. The Clinton campaign sees Hispanics as the core of its support in the state, and anticipates that they will make up as much as 40 percent of the total electorate, according to Garry Mauro, a former Texas land commissioner advising Clinton. 