The Democratic System at its worst...

As many of you know, I now volunteer to Cary Silverman who is running to be full-time DC council member for Ward 2.  Yesterday, we had a chance to compete for the much coveted endorsement from the Ward 2 Democrats.  Going  into the voting meeting last yet, I felt that we had a good chance to win.  We had a good turn out from our supporters and they had brought friends with them.  However, as the night continued I began to think we weren't going to win but at least make a good showing. And that we did.   Cary lost the Ward 2 endorsement 105 - 67.  But in order to win the endorsement, our opponent "bused" people as well as provided Fried chicken for his "supporters".   As one of my co-workers put it:

I don't care if you give ALL your voters an incentive to come out and vote.  However, I do have a HUGE problem when you give selective incentives and it appears to cut across racial lines.  I am under the belief that voting should be its own reward.  The carrot should not be chicken dinners, but civic duty and pride.  It got fuzzy for me when the people with the dinners went in and voted for him.

Moreover, the process was completely screwed up.  People presenting themselves were not not even asked for IDs when they came in to vote.  So basically there was no way for people to check if the people voting the endorsement were indeed Ward 2 residents.   From talking to one person that was bused in by our opponent , she said she was a resident of "ward 1, Ward 2, Ward 3 and Ward 4... Whatever you want me to be."  Something like that should have easily caught. What's the point of calling it a ward 2 Endorsement, if people from around the bused in?

The most frustrating part of last night was the realization I can't vote while  people who don't care about this election and would gladly give their vote for a KFC dinner are allowed to participate in the election.

Despite all of this there is a silver lining to last night meeting.  We can win this election. Had we convinced 15 more people to show we would have blocked him from receiving this endorsement.  So despite our opponent's questionable tactics, we can still win on Sep 9th.

You read comments from other frustrated voters in the dcwire blog post.