What I don't like about this process for the Democrats here in WA state is that only the caucus results of today count for them; the primary results from 2/19/08 won't count.  I still think you should vote then to help Democratic turnout and speak for your candidate.  By not having the primary count for anything, this confuses and can discourage participation.  (The Republicans allocate 49% of their delegates from today's caucus results and 51% from the primary.)

How it works:

• You sign in and state your candidate preference: Clinton, Obama, or Uncommitted.
  
• You sit and wait, and wait, and wait.  People read and chat.  We were in an empty school room sharing it with another precinct.
  
• They then announce the tallies from the sign-in sheets.  You can leave at that point and still be counted from the tally.
  
• Then someone from Obama's camp speaks for a minute (literally timed) about why s/he supports Obama.  Hint: he represents "change".  
  
• Then someone from Hillary's camp speaks.  Hint: she represents "experience".
  
• They both said more than that.  I give them a lot of credit for speaking out for their candidates.  So sincere...
  
• After the speeches, people can switch votes and uncommitteds can commit.
  
• We then go public by splitting into camps to elect delegtes for the candidates to go to the legislative caucus on 4/5.  I believe that rolls up into a county one and then a state one (this is where Washington's 97 or so delegates actually get allocated).  Last comes the national in Denver.
  
• We also submit suggestions for the candidates' messages.

I would sum it up as 1798 with infusions of 2008.  Some people walked there, because it's in our neighborhood.  People were dressed for 2008, there were cell phones, and even a LAP TOP to help tally the votes.  Oh, and they even had a microphone and speakers and a whistle!!!  We used pens...no feathers and ink wells.  But we were using scrap paper to elect people (legislative delegates) and write the candidate messages.  It's mainly 1798, because we have technology that makes this unnecessary and drives higher participation.  Things like voting machines (so 1900s) and vote-by-mail (so, umm, now).  But for whatever reason this is how we do it here in WA.  Did I mention it's the home of Microsoft?  (Our precinct did use excel to tally the votes.)

All told this took about 1.5 hours.

What? You want to know vote totals?  Oops, gotta go.  My horse and buggy waits.

Naw, I wouldn't do that to you.

Obama: about 47 (4 delegates)
Clinton: 18 (1 delegate)

Remember there were other precincts voting there too of which I don't know the results.   Those delegates are not the delegates that the candidates will actually get of the 97 or so WA awards.  I believe they have to go up through the convention process I outlined above.  More of that 1798 stuff.  But the results we get in the media today will tell us who won and by what percentage.  I'm sure the media will try to help us out with this once Paul Revere gallops the results over to them on the Lewis and Clark trail.  I kid.

Obviously, Obama will win this state as you may've been hearing.  They will split delegates proportionally.  The 'ole delegate race.

I'm just glad we didn't have a fire drill, and I didn't have to stand next to that bully, Vinnie McPatrick.  What a nightmare that would've been.