6:00 p.m.- we were still driving towards our caucus site in Kahaluu when a call came in from a friend at Jefferson School, where District 21 was gathering. The line was already out the door of the cafeteria, around the building, and heading into the parking lot. By 6:15, it was out past the parking lot and heading down the street towards the Ala Wai.
6:25 Kahaluu Elementary School, District 47. Cars are already parked along Waihee Road all the way down to Kam Highway. A long line of people stretches through the parking lot at the school. Everyone is calm, although my friend says it is chaos at Jefferson School, with probably 500 people there already.
6:31 A volunteer greeter here in Kahaluu just came past and said she ran out of everything a half hour ago.
6:35 p.m. Suddenly there’s movement in our line. There must be a couple of hundred people still lined up with us. Some elderly people are giving up and leaving. A reminder just went out that it will speed thing up if we all know our correct precinct.
6:49 p.m. –we’re in, but only because they started moving through the minority of people who are already registered to vote and as Democrats. I was in line at one point when the question was asked, and only a small fraction of those in line responded positively. So the place is filled with people who have not taken part in the process before. The cafeteria is full, and there are still a whole lot of people still in line outside filling out forms.
6:55 p.m. It is just short of chaos. Tables set out for particular precincts are overwhelmed. Instructions being called out can’t be heard about the din of the crowd. I’m told that party registration forms ran out before 6:15, and now yellow pads are being pressed into action as the stream of new party members continues to enter.
6:57 It appears to be standing room only, and the line is still out through the parking lot and beyond.
7:15 p.m. Technical problems sabotage live blog updates. HostRocket.com claims “emergency maintenance” on the server.
Meanwhile: It was sweet chaos in Kahaluu, as well as in other districts I heard from. In District 47, we ran out of everything, from party applications to ballots. Party volunteers made do with what was at hand, at some points asking people to just write their names and votes on any available paper and turn it in to be counted.
What didn’t happen was the routine business that is supposed to happen at this time. At least in our district, there was no way to elect precinct officers or do the other things that were supposed to be done.
Most of those in attendance were first timers, and it seemed to be largely an Obama crowd.
Wow. We finally left before 7:30 p.m., and there was still a line of people waiting to get in.
Now we just have to hope that everybody comes back for the actual elections!
9:30 p.m.–from an observer in Manoa:
Here’s how it apparently went down at Manoa Elementary (District 24):
Roughly 4,000 people lined up all over the place. They’re surprised by a demand that the declare their precincts (which is odd given that there was exactly one polling place per district, and nothing had been said about precincts prior to tonight). At around 5:45, 75 minutes before the official start, an announcement was made that the officials had run out of ballots. After a period of confusion, Neil Abercrombie got on a bullhorn and announced that he was making an “executive decision”: voters were told to forget about precincts…they simply needed to find an official, ask (without showing ID) for a 2×2 piece of white paper, write a name on that piece of paper, and deposit the paper in one of any number of manila envelopes wielded by officials around the polling place.
Then, (after what one friend estimates as 75% and the other 2/3 of the voters had voted and left), Neil got back on the horn and reversed himself, announcing that all voters needed to register with their precinct captains in order for their votes to count.
Wow.
That was amazing, messy, and invigorating! I suspect I was the greeter you mention; as I walked down the line I met only a very few Clinton supporters. The crowd was overwhelmingly pro-Obama.
It was crazy all over. I asked about a dozen people why they showed up. The answer was, “I want to make a difference.”
The BIG question, of course, is how does the party sustain this desire to make a difference? After all, supporting Obama is not a movement but a political race. The party is, at least in theory and in the ideal sense, a movement.
Look at Lingle for the difference between supporting a party (which is a long-term effort) and supporting a person (which is fleeting and transitory).
Excuse me, but Neil was out of line!
He was making “an executive decision”? Excuse me, but what position does he hold in the Democratic Party that he can assume the right to make “an executive decision”?
We all know that Neil is sometimes an excitable boy. It would have been better if he had calmed down rather than add to the chaos.
My understanding is that only about 40 voters failed to vote through the precincts structure. Out of about a thousand votes, we can absorb that level of “sloppiness.” But Neil is not an officer of the 24th District Party organization and he should have kept his mouth shut.
Don’t miss the photos:
http://ilind.net/2008/02/20/the-morning-after/
When I read Neil’s comment in the paper, I was shocked. I chaired one of the districts last night. It was crazy, but we did the best we could, as I am sure was the case everywhere. If an elected official in my district (there were a few there) got up and over-ruled what I was telling people, I would have been pissed.
As one of those annoying phone-bank callers, I wish I had known to tell people to bring the post card they received from the Democratic party that listed their House Distrct and precinct.
Josh Stabenow’s team in Palolo realized early-on that the masses weren’t going to fit in the cafeteria, so we went to the area displaying our precinct number, we voted and left by the back door as new voters came in the front.
There were a lot of canes and walkers and it seemed to me a lot of people who were born, like me, when we were a territory. There was also a sense that it was important to be there and the fact that it required standing in line didn’t seem to diminish that feeling.
I suspect that many of us who volunteered along the way will do so again and, hopefully, provide more useful information.