Cathy is showing her chops as an organizer. At the end of the county caucus this afternoon, someone managed to get the list of people who were there, along with their email addresses. Now Cathy has started an email list of our county’s delegates to the CD caucus (the 31 who showed up this afternoon) and she’s sent out a message running down what happens next, including a lot of speculative numbers.

On May 1 we all show up at the Omni Center for a larger version of what happened today. I am not sure how many people each county sends to this caucus. Roughly speaking, I would say there will be ABOUT 300 total people at this convention and about 175 (at most) will be Bernie people. This is if every county fills its total delegates/Bernie quotas. And out of those 175 +/- people, we will elect 4 delegates, 2 men and 2 women to go on to the national convention for Bernie.

I believe that means we will all get ballots listing those who submitted forms to be a delegate for Bernie AND attended their county caucus and we will vote for four people. If one or more people get at least 51% of the vote, they are automatically elected. If fewer than 4 get 51% on the first ballot, there is a second ballot, etc. until all four delegate positions have been filled.

This was followed by a discussion of the number of Bernie votes in various other counties, and an intriguing suggestion: “..to avoid some no shows like we had today, I would like to propose that we match up with caucus buddies so if on May 1 someone just really doesn’t feel like it, their cb can urge them to go.” That’s a good idea! Then, in the next sentence: “I am going to be the Purplearth caucus buddy.”

Cathy’s push for me to go just got a bit less subtle.

I got curious about numbers after reading Cathy’s email, and I eventually found a chart deep within this page that listed the number of delegates from each county. I found out that our county is the biggest in the district, and that our group is going to a caucus in our back yard while all the other counties’ delegates will have to travel.

I am confident that La Crosse County will have a lot to say about who the 3rd District’s Bernie delegates will be. But then I look at this list and I see 47 people running for four positions. So it’s still a long shot.