Democracy for New Mexico

Clinton vs. Obama: Compare and Contrast

Will.i.am's new video above vs. HRCin08's video below.

And then there's the Clinton campaign's new fear not hope phone at 3 AM TV ad:

Latest polling: Rasmussen on Texas and Ohio

Texas. 2/27. 503 likely voters. MoE 4% (2/24)
Clinton 44% (46)
Obama 48% (45)

Rasmussen has Obama in the lead in Texas for the first time, following other polling that gave Obama the lead days ago. Two weeks ago, Rasmussen had Clinton up by 16 points.

Ohio. 2/28*. 862 likely voters. MoE 3%. (2/25)
Clinton 47% (48)
Obama 45% (43)

Dem Prez Debate Tonight, MSNBC

Tonight's debate in at Cleveland State University between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton may be the last of the long Dem primary season. You can watch it live on MSNBC cable TV or online at msnbc.com from 7:00-8:30 PM MST. Moderator Brian Williams will be joined by Tim Russert.

The debate comes on the heels of increasingly heated and controversial rhetoric on the part of the Clinton campaign, as well as Sen. Chris Dodd's endorsement of Obama today in Ohio (video). Click to read Obama's response to Sen. Dodd's endorsement. And here's a response (video) by a senior Clinton adviser to questions about the endorsement and other topics from MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell. Primaries in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island will take place on March 4th, with 436 delegates at play.

According to the :

A CBS News/New York Times survey gave Obama a 54 percent to 38 percent lead among Democrats nationwide. A USA Today poll had him up 51 percent to 39 percent nationally among Democratic voters. There was more alarming news for Clinton, a day after a poll showed Obama leading in Texas for the first time, as a Rasmussen Reports survey Tuesday showed Obama cut her lead among Ohio Democrats to just five points, as she led 48 percent to 43 percent. Last week, Obama had 40 percent, and the week before 38 percent."

Accuracy of NM Secretary of State's Voter List Questioned

Heather Clark of the Associated Press has written a thoughtful and comprehensive article discussing problems encountered with the voter lists used at caucus sites during New Mexico's February 5th Democratic presidential caucus. New Mexico's Secretary of State's office, along with those of many other states, contracts with ES&S, a Nebraska-based corporation, to maintain its master list of registered voters.

The Democratic Party of New Mexico used the Secretary of State's list to generate the list used at the caucus sites. According to the Party, the only changes made to the master list were the result of a merge operation conducted by TrueBallot, which added in late additions sent by three counties. The Party contracted with TrueBallot to produce the list used at the caucus sites.

As quoted in the article, reports from caucus volunteers, long-time registered voters who weren't on the caucus site list, the Mora County Clerk and others seem to point to the Secretary of State's list as a likely source of data problems. Excerpts:

In interviews with The Associated Press, several voters and volunteer poll workers pinpointed problems with the voter lists at polling places—and raised the possibility that the trouble may have originated not with the party but with the voter lists Democratic organizers were provided by the Secretary of State's office and county clerks.

In Mora County, for example, where half the voters cast provisional ballots, about 1,000 Democrats were stripped of their party affiliation in the Secretary of State's databank and so were never given to the Democratic Party for the caucus list, County Clerk Charlotte Duran said.

In one Bernalillo County polling place, last names beginning with the letter "A" were missing, said Lynn Jacobs, a volunteer poll worker at the site. In San Miguel County, voters on an entire street did not appear on the list, said Pat Leahan, director of the Las Vegas Peace and Justice Center who observed the caucus. And Caucus Director Beth Adams said caucus workers have noticed the names of some people whose addresses were rural routes or post office boxes were not included on the lists.

The names of state Auditor Hector Balderas and state District Judge William Lang—both longtime Democrats and voters—were omitted from the voter lists that were relied on during the Super Tuesday caucus, the two officials said.

A half dozen poll workers said they saw other longtime Democrats try to vote on Super Tuesday only to find their names were not on the lists.

"I had person after person, who had voted in every election, they hadn't moved in years, and were not on the lists," Jacobs said.

Since the lists were provided by Secretary of State Mary Herrera's office, any problems during the caucus could be repeated for the June primary and general election in November.

The question is: Were the problems inherent in the original lists provided by Herrera's office or did the Democrats change the data and inadvertently knock off voters' names?

... Anne Kass, a retired district judge and regular party volunteer, said nearly half those who voted by provisional ballot at the Albuquerque polling place where she worked were regular Democratic voters, who carried their voter ID cards that showed they were in the correct polling place.

"They would say, 'My spouse's name is here. My kids' names are here.' It was bizarre," Kass said.

Kass said the problems on caucus day make her worry about whether they will be repeated in later elections this year.

"I'm concerned about June and November. I'm concerned about the accuracy of elections and have been for some time now," she said.

The Response of the Secretary of State
Unfortunately, NM Secretary of State Mary Herrera and others in her office seem uninterested in determining if there are problems with the state's master list, as produced by ES&S:

A spokesman for Herrera said her office has no immediate plans to investigate reports of missing voter names and is waiting to hear from the Democratic Party about any inadequacies with the lists.

"If there are any discrepancies, it would have been after it would have been received by the Democratic Party. Let them investigate it. Let's find out what really happened," spokesman James Flores said.

The article goes on to debunk this view in regard to at least some of the errors encountered:

But Mora County's missing voter names happened before they handed over their lists to the Democrats, Duran said.

Clerks there discovered after the caucus that about 1,000 Democrats and about 100 Republican voters had been stripped of their party affiliation in the databank. So the Democrats' names were never passed to the party to be included in the caucus lists.

Duran said she contacted Election Systems & Software, which contracts with the state to manage the software, but was unable to get a guarantee that the problem would not crop up again.

"They couldn't answer me or they didn't want to," she said.

... Since 2000, the Nebraska-based company has provided the state with software, which was last updated in December, Flores said. County clerks offices are responsible for updating voter information, which, in turn, automatically updates the Secretary of State's list, he said.

"Everything that the software was supposed to have done before we handed over the list to the Democrats, we're satisfied with," Flores said.

Dem Party Investigation
Meanwhile, the Dem Party has said they will be studying how the caucus was conducted and looking further into complaints about the voter list:

The Democrats say they plan to investigate complaints about voter lists they received. Democratic Party Chairman Brian Colon and Gov. Bill Richardson have scheduled an April 25 summit in Albuquerque to discuss the caucus, and Colon and Lt. Gov. Diane Denish are talking about forming a committee to review the caucus.

"We're going to take a long-term look both at whatever happened at the caucus and whether we're going to hold a caucus and that's going to take a long time," said Josh Geise, the party's interim executive director, who started working for the party about two weeks after the caucus.

... Geise said three counties—San Juan, Santa Fe and Eddy—had late registrants that did not show up on the Secretary of State's Office lists, but were later forwarded to the party as soon as they were available.

The party then turned the lists over to TrueBallot, which it hired to help administer the caucus.

Response by TrueBallot
TrueBallot denies that anything they did in handling the master list would have created the kinds of errors found with the list at caucus sites:

The company's chief information officer, Nick Koumoutseas, said his company merged the initial Secretary of State list with the late registrants from the three counties and managed the databank.

But Koumoutseas said he does not think names were dropped from the Democrats' list during his company's management of them.

"I've been doing this for 13 years and I generally err on the side of having too many instances of voters. I would have the same name in there twice" in cases were addresses were vague or names showed different spellings, he said.

Speculation on DNC VoteBuilder Merge
The article also addresses questions as to whether there was a merge of the State's list with the DNC's VoteBuilder list that might have caused the problems:

Some poll workers and election watchdog groups have speculated that some of the problems may have come up when the state Democratic Party merged the Secretary of State's list with a VoteBuilder list of Democratic voters, which was prepared by the Democratic National Committee.

Adams said the VoteBuilder list was only used after the caucus to help validate voters who cast provisional ballots and was never merged with the Secretary of State's voter list.

Actions Needed
So what should come next? Obviously every effort should be made to determine the source of the list problems so that errors and omissions can be corrected before we vote again at our June primary and the general election in November. Furthermore, we must learn what kind of system or human errors produced the inaccuracies so that additional inaccuracies aren't produced in the coming months. And if we're to trust our election process, any investigation of the problems must be done out in the open, not behind closed doors. We can't allow any examination into the source of the flawed data to end up as just another political blame game full of deceptions and spin -- while the problems fester uncorrected.

The Secretary of State's office needs to stop the finger pointing and begin working with the Democratic Party to produce an honest assessment of what happened with the voter list and what can be done to assure it doesn't happen again in the future. The DPNM needs to reach out to the Secretary of State and begin working with them to get it done, and get it done out in the open so ALL the problems and their causes are exposed.

Paul Stokes, coordinator of United Voters of New Mexico, an electoral watchdog, said he thinks the Democrats should investigate the problems in conjunction with the Secretary of State's office.

"Clearly this needs to be investigated in a transparent way so the public can know what's going on," he said.

P.S. The reason I quoted so much of the article as published in the Las Cruces Sun-News is that the Albuquerque Journal omitted some of the most important passages when it published a version of this story today. Specifically, the Journal's truncated version omitted some of the quotes by caucus site volunteers and did not include the explanation by TrueBallot of their handling of the list and how it was merged with updates from three counties.

Clinton Campaign Devolves Into Hypocrisy, Mockery

Mixed with a little Pink Floyd above. Moving closer to the edge below.

How low can she go? Apparently really, really, really low if she keeps listening to the venal advice characteristic of slimy Mark Penn and Howard Wolfson, her two most prominent strategy and messaging consultants. She's now freely using the Rovian tactic of accusing her rival of doing something she's doing. However, I can't imagine how the majority of voters in the March 4th primary states will see it as anything but the transparent and desperate hypocrisy that it is.

Clinton's plunge into bashing Obama doesn't seem to be working, at least in Texas, where she once held a huge lead. The lastest polling released today by CNN/Opinion Research Corp. shows a statistical dead heat: 50% of likely Democratic primary voters said Obama is their choice for the party's nominee, while 46% backed Clinton. Two recent polls by other organizations also show the race statistically even.

Clinton still holds about a 10-point lead over Obama in Ohio, according to polls released today by Quinnipiac University, the University of Cincinnati, and the American Research Group. However, she's rapidly losing ground to Obama as the March 4th primary nears. Her lead was at 21 points in a February 12th Quinnipiac poll, and a Columbus Dispatch Poll released late last month had Clinton up 23 points.

NAFTA
Despite endorsements of Obama by unions including the Teamsters, SEIU, Unite HERE and the International Transport Workers Representatives of Unite HERE, Clinton keeps claiming that Obama supports NAFTA while she does not. Here's what Obama is saying in his stump speeches on that point:

"Sen Clinton has gotten mad at me, because I said she supported NAFTA,” Obama said at a rally in Toledo. “She said, ‘Well, that’s misleading.’ And I had to say, ‘Well, hold on a second.’ The Clinton administration championed NAFTA, passed NAFTA, signed NAFTA. She's saying that part of the experience that makes her the best qualified to be president is all the work that she was doing in the Clinton administration. You can't take credit for everything that's good in the Clinton administration and then suddenly say you don't want to take credit for what folks don't like about the Clinton administration.”

Considering that the Clinton administration considered the passage of NAFTA to be one of their crowning achievements, it's beyond the pale that Hillary is now claiming she's against it. I guess that's what happens in a floundering campaign that needs huge wins in Texas and Ohio to get any bragging rights at all. In fact, Clinton would have to win all the remaining races by about a 60-40 margin to catch Obama in the pledged delegage department.

Should be quite a debate tomorrow in Cleveland.

DPNM: Back to the Future

The next time you want local mainstream media to pay attention to your event, send out an anonymous and roughly written "press release" promising mayhem and claiming widespread support. Works like a charm.

I don't know who sent out the release the day before Saturday's Democratic Party of New Mexico's special State Central Committee meeting in Albuquerque on resolutions and platform announcing there'd be an attempt to oust DPNM Chair Brian Colón. The statement claimed strong support for a recall from SCC members, candidates and current and former Dem officeholders, but didn't name any names. KRQE-News was apparently so taken with the prospect of a brouhaha aimed at Colón that they covered the press release challenge on their Friday evening broadcast -- despite there being no way to check out its veracity. New TV-News Rule: No fact checking necessary on political stories about possible Democratic Party turmoil.

So what happened at Saturday's SCC meeting? Several standing ovations for Brian Colón (right) and everybody else involved in the Dem Caucus for hanging in there and performing the incredibly tough jobs of responding to record voter turnout and painstakingly qualifying and counting 17,000+ provisional ballots. Most attendees wore pro-Colon stickers.

"Evidently, the rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated" said Colón. "I sit before you humbled by the support I have received from the 33 county chairs. They believe in Brian Colón." Here's an AP story, an Albuquerque Journal article and a column by the Journal's Gene Grant about the meeting.

Colón announced that the Party would pursue a two-pronged plan to study the strengths and weaknesses of the Caucus process: 1) forming a committee headed by himself and Lt. Gov. Diane Denish to study what happened, including problems with the voter lists, and consider alternatives for future caucuses or primaries; 2) organizing a town hall Caucus Summit to be headed by Gov. Bill Richardson, tentatively set for April 25, to hear feedback and suggestions from Party members and voters about the issue. 

Colón reminded the crowd that vote counting is still going on in California and New York, places where state government ran the primaries with larger budgets and many more workers. He also mentioned there'd be no real need for a Democratic presidential caucus in 2012 if we win the presidency -- our incumbent prez would presumably be running for a second term. Talk about a positive thought.

Most of the conversations among revved-up crowd members from all over the state focused on a willingness to work hard to turn New Mexico completely blue at the Congressional level and take back the White House. There was a palpable sense of excitement in the crowd about our November prospects, along with amazement at the Caucus turnout.

After buzzing around among the candidate tables outside the meeting room at CNM's Smith-Brasher hall and cheering for speakers that included NM Federation of Labor- AFL-CIO President Christine Trujillo, State Treasurer James Lewis and State Auditor Hector Balderas, the SCC members set about conducting the Party's business.

What followed were hours of often tedious work to get through more than 100 resolutions that had emerged from the ward and county levels to the State Resolutions & Platform Committee, and then to the SCC for approval. Those gaining passage, along with previously approved resolutions, will form the backbone of the State Party's 2008 platform, which will be voted on at the Democratic Pre-Primary Convention at the Santa Ana Star Casino in Rio Rancho on March 15, 2008.

Not a peep was heard during the meeting about any resolution or motion to recall the Chair.

Click on images for larger versions. All photos by M.E. Broderick.

SurveyUSA Poll: Obama Has Best Chance to Beat McCain in NM

Austin Pre-Debate Parade Rally: Love the HS Marching Band

In SurveyUSA poll results released yesterday, Obama is ahead of McCain by 15 points, with Clinton's margin at 5 points in New Mexico. The survey, commissioned by KOB-TV, was conducted during the period of 2/15-2/17/08 and shows 5% undecided:

Obama 55%--40% McCain
Clinton 50%--45% McCain

Click to see the cross tabs SurveyUSA polled 506 registered voters. The results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4%. You can see the results from SurveyUSA polls in other states here.

Should Clinton Withdraw from the Race?

A compelling concept on a day featuring a Clinton-Obama debate in Austin, TX where she must decide whether to attack Obama on the low road or move beyond her personal presidential ambitions. Tonight's debate: CNN, 6:00 PM MST.

Local Mainstream Media: Garbage In, Garbage Out

Awwwww. The "pundits" and "reporters" had to attend a press conference with NM Dem Party Chair Brian Colon and others when the final results of our caucus were announced last week. They're leaking complaints with the usual suspects that it was too long and held them up from their important duties, which often appear to entail a whole bunch of gossiping and groaning amongst themselves. Don't you feel sorry for them? They actually get paid to report on politics, while local and national bloggers struggle on as freebie public service outlets and writers for alternative outlets eek out a living.

I guess the insider word is that they've been devoting so much of their precious time to the caucus story that they're all tuckered out. They wanted the results immediately from a contest that was one of the closest in the nation to date. They wanted it yesterday despite a record turnout and more than 17,000 provisional ballots to qualify -- and a complex negotiation required to balance the demands of Party and the campaigns on qualification standards. With all the grunt work done by volunteers.

Not The Facts, Maam
Many local mainstream media outlets wrongly but continually compared New Mexico's Party-run caucus with contests in other states where the margins weren't even close. Sure, quick results are much easier when the time-consuming tasks of qualifying and counting provisional ballots aren't in the picture because they won't make much difference in the outcome.

Sadly, in many cases daily coverage of the story consisted almost entirely of complaints about delays and childish mockery of all those working to deal with a myriad of complexities. Guess what? The unofficial results of the regular paper ballots were pretty much ready the day after the election. Minor point, I know, when you're spinning for the opposite team or concentrating on creating "controversy." Much easier to mindlessly repeat words like "debacle" and "disaster" than to report the facts as they emerged. Or, better yet, to use the situation as an opportunity to educate the public on the finer points of voting, vote counting and the strengths and weaknesses of today's election processes.

Old fashioned, I know, yearning for the days when The Press was viewed as a powerful and important Fourth Estate, and journalists focused on providing clear, accurate and fair answers to Who? What? Where? How? Why?

Many of our local reporters obviously had no interest in pursuing rumors to their source, researching the source of problems with voter lists or compiling documented info on which caucus sites experienced problems -- and which ones didn't. Instead of following leads and pursuing facts, too many were all too content to make judgments based on heresay and tsk tsk about the "embarrassment" of it all. On any given day, the coverage in the Albuquerque Journal and on TV news shows seemed to have more in common with crime tabloids, Wonkette or COPS than anything to do with genuine journalism.

So many of the trad media writers have grown quite comfortable serving as stenographers for Republican and corporate interests. Those running TV "news" organizations seem more concerned with packing the screen with garish graphics and screeching sounds than thoughtful content. It pains them to have to listen to a Democratic point of view or anything more complex than red light camera laments. Their ears hurt. Their fingers cramp. They get all figgety and crabby.

Protectors of the Status Quo
Of course they've been assisted in this whine-fest by the usual online suspects who serve as loyal mouthpieces for "anonymous" sources like former State Party Chair John you-know-who and others who can't stand that it isn't them on the podium or in the SCC seats. Times like this are perfect for avengers to pile on, with the implicit message that they'd be doing so much better in handling everything. Well I guess that's true if you like sneeky opaqueness vs. transparency, sneering arrogance vs. openness and dissembling more than the facts. Accountability is a concept foreign to the status-quo bunch. The governor, the "tipsters," and the "Dem insiders" all spent most of their time since the caucus pointing fingers away from themselves -- a familiar M.O. regardless of the controversy.

The New Ambulance Chasers
What about accountability on the part of the local mainstream media? A major criticism about the Dem caucus has been that adequate information wasn't available to the public. Many people have reported that they didn't know where, how or when to vote, or didn't know they had to be registered Democrats to do so. Of course the Party could and should have done a better job of getting the word out, despite their pinched budget this time out. But do our newspapers and TV "news" outfits share any blame on this count?

Detailed, informative and nuanced coverage of local political and governmental news is almost nonexistent in our local mainstream media. Why bother when you can just point your cameras at the latest car crash or substitute photos of monster truck rallies for reporting? Do local media and news outlets have any civic or journalistic responsibilty to serve the public and provide educational and informative coverage about things like the political caucus?

I know for a fact that these outfits routinely receive news release after news release about such topics, but refuse to provide any decent coverage or to show up at press conferences unless there's a scandal involved. If it's something they can mock or distort into at least a pseudo-controversy, they're there. If it's something to edify the public, they're mostly missing in action. Certain types of lawyers are often labeled as no more than ambulance chasers, trying to make a profit off of misery and suffering. But I think today's most blatant ambulance chasers have to be some of our local reporters and news "editors."

Murder, mayhem and mockery rule their days -- all to pump up the bottom line and sell more ads. Even worse, they feel perfectly justified making fun of people who work on real problems in the real world.

Of course there are exceptions, but I have to say that the overall coverage of New Mexico's caucus was often inaccurate, lazy, repetitive and juvenile -- like the MSM reporting about many other aspects of politics and government. Our democracy suffers.

Given all the years we've had to endure the suffering inflicted by certain tabloid-addicted tribunes and their shallow, lead-balloon jokes, I think it's only fitting to give them a dose of their own medicine for a change, don't you?

(Updated) Dem Prez Race: Wisconsin Primary, Hawaii Caucus

UPDATE 2/20/08: Wipeout. Not even close. Obama overwhelmed Clinton in Wisconsin 58.1% to 40.7% and in Hawaii 75.7% to 23.6%. Obama has now won in 10 straight states. According to analysts, Clinton would have to win the remaining states by something like a 60% to 40% margin to catch Obama in the pledged delegate count. In recent polling, Obama has pulled even with Clinton in Texas, and he's gaining ground in Ohio with Clinton's lead being cut in half over the past week there. The next contests will occur on March 4th in Texas, Ohio, Vermont and Rhode Island.

In Wisconsin, Obama's victory spanned the state and many demographic categories. Even in categories where Clinton has been winning, Obama made major inroads. Clinton did win 60-39% among those aged 65 and older but among white women, Clinton hung on by only a 51-49% margin. Among voters with only a high school education, Clinton won 52-44%. Clinton won among Catholics, but only by 51-49%. After Obama's projected victory was announced last night, Clinton gave a speech in Youngstown, Ohio and did not say a word about the Wisconsin primary or congratulate Obama on his win.

As in previous primaries and caucuses, the Democratic turnout more than doubled that of Republicans. The total Democratic vote in Wisconsin was 1,110,702 versus 409,078 for Republicans.
**********
It's arctic, windy and icy in many areas of Wisconsin today, but the weather is clear and the primary goes on. These folks are used to biting cold. Recent polling shows Obama and Clinton in a statistical tie. The polls close at 7:00 PM MST, and 74 pledged delegates are at stake. CNN results.

Not surprisingly, it's balmy and beautiful for today's Hawaii caucuses. No polling is available, but Obama is favored because he does so well in caucuses and his half-sister, Honolulu school teacher Maya Soetoro-Ng, is campaigning for him. Obama was born in Hawaii and spent most of his years through age 18 there. There are 20 pledged delegates up for grabs. CNN results aren't expected until around Midnight New Mexico time.

Anne Kass Guest Blog: The NM Caucus & Privatized Elections

This is a guest blog by political activist and retired Second Judicial District Judge Anne Kass of Albuquerque:

Enough with the headlines and lead sentences about how embarrassing the Democratic "Caucus" was on February 5th. That so many voters were made to wait in long lines was shameful, but that was the result of not enough money and volunteers to provide an adequate number of voting sites. Not having enough money is a problem, but it's not an embarrassment. In truth, we did the best we could with the limited resources we had.

As for the headlines that continued during the week proclaiming that the outcome of the "Caucus" remained unknown, get a grip -- and lose the word "winner"! The election was not about winners or losers. The election was about how to apportion New Mexico's delegates to the Democratic National Convention. New Mexico is not a winner-take-all state.

We knew the outcome of the election before we went to bed Tuesday night. The outcome was, and is, that New Mexico Democrats are roughly evenly divided between Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama, and each one of them will receive delegates from New Mexico. 

What's With the Lists?
The really important story from this event has to do with the 17,000 provisional ballots. As someone who worked with provisional ballots at one of the polling places, it appeared to me that easily half of those made to vote provisionally were regular voters, at their correct polling place. Still their names did not appear on our list. Albuquerque Journal columnist Jim Belshaw reported that Judge William F. Lang was made to vote provisionally because his name did not appear on the list at his regular polling plase. A friend who worked at another site said their list had no names beginning with the letter "A." The big, and important, question -- and news story -- is: What's with the lists?

I only recently learned that Secretary of State, Mary Herrera has privatized or outsourced voter list maintenance to ES&S. As reported on Alternet:

"James Flores, spokesman for Secretary of State Mary Herrera, a Democrat. 'There is a (voter) list and it is compiled by ES&S (Election Systems and Software).'"

I, and every Democrat I know, made it clear to Ms. Herrera, when she was asking for our votes, that privatization of our election process had to stop, which she promised she would do. Needless to say, I'm very disappointed to learn that she broke her promise and has contracted with a corporation the name of which my mind instantly associates with the words "election fraud."

See this document prepared by VotersUnite.org if you're comfortable with ES&S having its mitts in our election process.

The Democratic Party should be spending its resources tracking down each one of those 17,000 provisional voters, first, to make sure their names DO appear on the lists for November, and then to find out why their names were not on the lists, or more to the point, who exactly is responsible for their names not being on the lists. If it's ES&S, they should be investigated. Whether ES&S is or is not responsible for the faulty lists, we need to stop privatizing our election process, period.

And to those quoted in the Albuquerque Journal who had harsh words for Democratic Party officials and the volunteers who worked the "Caucus," -- such as Mr. Andrew Mook who was reported to have said, "Why must we continue to suffer these vestiges of total incompetence?" or Former Attorney General Patricia Madrid who was reported to have said the caucus was a "major embarrassment" and that the Party didn't spend enough money to fund it; or Former County Commissioner Daymon Ely who was reported to have said, "What they did is political malpractice..." I say, next election, don't just go to vote -- volunteer to work for and contribute money to the Democratic Party (as opposed to a candidate) so the Party will have the resources to prevent the shameful consequence of voters being disillusioned by long lines and defective voter lists.

Oh yes, and just in case either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama dares to complain about the "Caucus" process, it would have been much wiser if, instead of sending their many volunteers to the polling sites to watch, they had sent them to the Party to work.

This is a guest blog by Anne Kass, who posts periodically on DFNM. Guest blogs provide our readers with an opportunity to express their opinions, and may or may not represent our views. If you'd like to submit a piece for consideration as a guest blog, contact me by clicking on the Email Me link on the upper left-hand side of the page.