It wasn't a new law or way of electing the next president of the United States... but, it was unfamiliar to many but the few party diehards.

The "Texas Two-Step" as the uniquly Texas way of primary voting was called by Hillary Clinton when she spoke to a full house at UTEP last month was as easy for many voters to handle as getting the wrapper off of a new CD.

The second part of the "Two-Step" is the delegate selection and voting. This was finally experienced by thousands of El Paso County voters who had never participated in this part of the primary before. They came back to their polling station to cast votes for delegates.

This meant that voters, as usual, got in line to vote in the primary during the day for the regular 7-7 voting period or during early voting. Then, if, and only if, they had voted in the primary were they allowed to come back and get on the list of nominees for delegates or just to sign-up for their candidate which would entitle either Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barak Obama to gain a percentage of the delegate count.

As it turned out this was very important because in many precints Sen. Clinton won the primary vote count but Sen. Obama won the delegate count.

At the Fire Station in the Upper Valley on Borderland Road the scene was very unusual. Not only was the line much longer than usual during the afternoon but even as the sun set there were people standing in the dark. For information and photos See.. Long Lines But, there were real problems with handlying voters that were coming back to vote in the caucus.

At one point the voting station personnel had the firemen shut the doors so that only those people in line before 7:00 P.M. could stand in line. That meant that the line had to coil several times inside the station. All this time, the number of people coming to vote for caucuses started to form a huge crowd outside.

There was little organization or coordination between the voting station staffers as if they had little idea of what to do with the caucus voters.

Finally, someone suggested that the caucus voters be allowed to come inside and stand apart from the voters. Then the questions started flying. "Who is in charge here?" "Where do we sign up?" etc.

At one point the staffers who were sent from the El Paso Democratic Party started letting people start to register for the caucus. The only problem was that Penny did not announce it to anyone.

That wasn't the only problem. Penny said that she only had one sheet to sign up caucus voters and then the Obama supporters wanted to know why she had started letting Clinton voters sign up and why she only had one sheet.

One of the Obama supports decided to get involved and help get things organized. Finally, six sheets were found but that wasn't enough for the crowd of over 100 caucus voters present. Other sheets were filled out in duplicate and the registration of all caucus voters was complete.

From then on, the delgates were nominated and then the votes were counted on each page with a witness testifying that the count was indeed what the person said. Then with the number of delegates that each candidate won the delegates were selected from those nominated.

The process took over two hours and although things were very tense at first the process finished up very cordially and orderly.

  Caucus.... Greta Miller.... “It’s very disorganized”. This is my first caucus. “ “To have more influence on the selecting a candidate. Who had inspired her to come and put up with this disorganization... “Barak Obama” Miller said that “as far as I understand this will count for one delegate. “ It is based on past performance... participation... I think the district gets more delegates if they have had a high turnout in the past.” Rosie Almada and Albert Almada... I am exstatically happy .... that Hillary won Ohio... and I’m thinking that maybe Texas. I’m a true Texan... and I was thinking that Texas... we’re not going to let her down. And I think that is the way it’s looking and we’re over here celebrating already.” I think Hllary will be very happy with El PPaso. She was here... the former Presidnet Clinton was here .... Chelsea was here... they all made sure that they came here to see us and ask for our vote and let us know what they had planned for us. Whereas... I never saw Obama show... and that is important because for me... he is new... I never knew that much about him... to begin with... and so it really counts that they thought we were that important enough to come and visit... so I really appreciated that. Penny Jenesec

Prepared by UVB staff.

(Photos: Brax - Valley Publishing Company)

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