Caucus

I've always heard that 'Every Vote Counts!' And I've always believed it to be true ... to a certain extent. But regardless of the impact, I believe in the importance of taking advantage of the privilege that so many sacrificed to give us. So when election year rolls around, I always exercise my privilege (or right) to vote. And even though one candidate or party tends to win an election by 1,000's or even 10,000's or more than the other, I'm always glad I voiced my opinion by voting for one of them.

I'm sure everybody knows that the Iowa Caucus was this past Tuesday, January 3rd. Iowa has the distinction of being the first in the nation to hold their presidential caucus. And since this is an election year, we had the opportunity to participate. Now being just a caucus, it by no means determines who the final presidential candidate will be. But it certainly jump starts the political arena and the publicity it generates tends to propel the top few candidates onto the national scene. It's always thought to be best to come out in the top three from Iowa if you want to stay in the race.

Because of the perceived importance of the Iowa caucus, a majority of the Republican presidential candidates spent time here over the past month or more. If you wanted to hear their message, you could certainly find a town hall meeting or speech somewhere within a reasonable distance to meet the candidate. Obviously, we took advantage of that as well!

This year, since our precinct was so large, a facility was rented in an adjoining suburb to facilitate both ours and another precinct for caucus night. So instead of a small crowd of maybe 50 - 200, gathering in a local church or school, we probably had over a 1,000 people attending in a rented events center (complete with concessions and drinks!). It was quite a crowd!

After checking in, we mingled as we waited for the speeches to begin. We ended up congregating with numerous friends from church as well as a few of our next door neighbors. All together, our 'group' was 13 people. One of those was definitely voting for Ron Paul. Another was undecided. I'm not certain how another two were voting, but I think the remaining 9, including Garrett & I, were voting for Mitt Romney.

Now I know that who you decide to vote for is a private matter, and I'm not trying to persuade anyone to vote for the candidate I have picked to support. But I'm telling you all this because a point was driven home to me Wednesday morning after all the votes were counted for each Republican presidential candidate. And I want to share that with you.

After voting Tuesday evening, we came home, got our kids to bed, then turned on the TV and anxiously watched the tallies coming in from all the different precincts in 99 different counties. The first place position was a leap-frog contest between Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney the whole night. First one would be up by less than 100 votes. Then the other would take the lead. It continued this way the whole night. It was as exciting as a close played sporting event!

Unfortunately, some of the precincts were very slow at getting their numbers in. So finally, after 11:30 at night, with a difference of a mere 13 votes, we had to call it a night and head for bed, still waiting for the remaining less than 5% of the vote count to come in.

First thing Wednesday morning, we pulled up the caucus results. And guess what! Mitt Romney won by 8 votes! And now for the point of all this rambling .....

As I previously said, including Garrett & I, there were 9 friends there (among the 100's of other supporters, of course) to vote for Mitt Romney. What if we had not gone? Romney won by only 8 votes! So take away one small group of friends, and the whole outcome would have been different! Amazing!

For the first time in my voting career, I truly felt that EVERY VOTE COUNTS! And I will take the liberty to assume that my vote was one of the 8 that put Mitt Romney in first place!

I'm so glad I chose to exercise my privilege to vote!