| We got to the Doubletree fifteen minutes before our congressional district assembly and convention was to begin at 6pm. No signs, no people directing us, nothing but one big-ass line snaking around the lobby. I asked three or four people what they were standing in line for, and none of them actually knew - they just saw a line and figured they'd better stand in it!
Fortunately for us, as we wandered around trying to figure out WTF was going on, Steve, one of our other La Plata County delegates found us and steered us directly to the correct (hidden, barely-marked) table where we could sign in for CD3. "But they're starting in five minutes!" we said nervously. "Don't worry, there's still another assembly in the room. Yours has been delayed by an hour."
(In fact, when we checked back an hour later, we'd been delayed another hour. Which wasn't so bad, because it gave us time to go find dinner.)
In the meantime, we had another task. Most of the La Plata County delegates didn't receive their state credentials, including me. Fortunately, Steve directed us to the two kindly old ladies who had the paperwork to give me my credentials for the state convention. Notice I said "me" - several other delegates were inexplicably not on their list. Although we presented our official county list, the ladies (who were very nice and helpful, but slower than molasses in January) didn't have the mysterious and all-important VAN number and therefore couldn't help the people not on their list. Argh.
This list-omission seems to be a theme. When CD3 finally got underway, we raced through the formalities and the introduction of delegate candidates for the national convention (OMG 92) and then had the balloting procedure explained to us three times. Incorrectly, as it turned out - we were told to vote for two men, but our packets, when we got them, instructed us to vote for three.
But the most aggravating thing of all was that two of La Plata's candidates - and the two whom the county had gotten behind early, our State Senator Jim Isgar and Michelle Rabouin, one of the few black women in La Plata County - were inexplicably omitted from the ballot. We were told write-ins were okay, then that they didn't count, then that they were okay, then that they didn't count. (I voted write-in for them anyway, to make a point.)
We finally stumbled out of the Doubletree at 10:20, exhausted, bewildered, and pissed off. And sorry for CD4, who was just starting their assembly.
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