Coloring Eggs

We invited family and friends for a dinner party on Saturday last. We had a great time and no one complained about the food, so I guess it was a success. Before dinner, Chris and our granddaughter came out to color eggs. It was our granddaughter's first time. Here are a couple of photos:

And a short movie. This might have been our granddaughter's first encounter with stickers.

Mom's New House

Pretty soon now, my mom is moving to Texas to join the rest of us as transplants. We are so excited. She will be moving into a brand new house that is being built just for her. If all goes well, she'll be here about the first of June. Here are some pictures of the construction site that we took today.

Another Visit from our Granddaughter

We get to see our Texas granddaughter often, which pleases us immensely. When she came (with mom and dad) this week, her mom was doing a little work on the computer and our granddaughter wanted to help. She will soon have her own computer--mom and dad made a donation to the outfit that's providing low cost computers to kids in developing countries, which gave them the opportunity to buy one for her. 

Here's a picture of our granddaughter on her mom's lap getting ready to help:

Here's a movie of our granddaughter interacting with a kid-friendly program on the Net:

The Texas Primary and Caucus

By now most everyone has heard about the complicated way the Democratic Party in Texas selects its delegates to the national convention. They've been doing it this way for a long time, but it came to everyone's attention this year because the Texas primary/caucus actually meant something. In the past, the candidate was usually chosen by now, so the process never got much coverage. 

As newly minted Texans, we thought it was our patriotic duty to participate. There were a lot of explanations of the process circulating in the weeks before election day. Both candidates sent out information to their supporters and the newspapers tried to inform the public. In retrospect, no one did a very good job of describing the whole process. Ben Sargent, the editorial cartoonist for the Austin Statesman described it thusly:

Despite the confusion and given that we are retired and have lots of time, we went anyway, just to see what all the excitement was about. It turned out to be great fun for a cynic like me. The process is complicated by several factors. First, voting in Texas no longer takes place on "election day." We voted a couple of weeks early when there were no crowds. Second, no one anticipated the number of people who would show up for the caucus (which begins 15 minutes after the polls close). Third, no one expected that so many people would actually vote in the primary (some jurisdictions where they didn't use electronic balloting came very close to running out of ballots). Lastly, most of the volunteers at the polls had no idea whatsoever about how the process would proceed after the polls closed.

Here are a couple pictures I took of part of the crowd at our polling place. 

When voting ended, there were about 750 people milling around waiting for the caucus to begin. It was supposed to start at 7:15, but ours didn't begin until 8. I understand that some of them didn't begin until after 9 (in Texas, if you are in line when the polls "close" you get to vote, no matter how long it takes).

Once things settled down, it turned out the caucus process is actually pretty simple, but like the overall primary process, it comes in two parts. First, everyone in a given precinct stands in line and once it is confirmed that they voted in the primary they give their name, address, telephone number and candidate preference (no secret ballot here!), which is hand written on a prepared form. Once this is done, you can leave if you want. The totals for each candidate are summed and a predetermined formula calculates the number of delegates allotted to each candidate by precinct. 

The popular vote allocates 128 delegates and the caucuses allocate 67. The number of delegates a candidate gets in the caucuses depends on how willing that candidate's supporters are to hang around for the caucus. You may recall that Clinton was announced as having won the Texas primary. Actually, it looks like she lost. From the popular vote, she got 2 more delegates than Obama. But it appears that in the caucuses Obama got 7 more votes than Clinton, giving him a net win of 5 delegates in Texas--all because his supporters were  more committed (?) or informed (?) than Clinton's. But...

The caucus is not over after you indicate your preference. The distribution of delegates (by precinct) is announced to the voters who have remained and they caucus in separate groups according to whom they support to elect the actual delegates to the next level. This group of remainders also votes on a set of resolutions proposed by the Texas Democratic Party. In my precinct there were 178 voters who expressed a candidate preference (110 for Obama and 68 for Clinton). Obama got 2 of our three delegates and Clinton got the other. Of the 178 people who voted, fewer than 25 stayed for the actual caucus--about 15-16 for Obama and 7-8 for Clinton. Those groups chose the actual delegates.

Because of all the publicity it garnered this year, I expect that the process will be changed before 2012.