These are precinct caucuses.
The meeting starts with a temporary chairman, selected before the meeting by the state party. Usually someone who served previously as one of the two precinct chairmen.
The first order of business is to elect two precinct chairman to two year terms. In addition to running the party organization in the precinct for that time, they also serve on the county party committee.
Once that is done they debate and vote on platform planks.
Then they elect delegates to the county convention, some of whom will be elected at the county level to go on as delegates to the congressional district caucus and the state convention. The number to be chosen is set beforehand by the party.
Which leaves the part of the meeting most folks know about, which is nominations for president. Representatives for each candidate speak to the group about their choice, and then a straw vote is taken. This is a non-binding vote which in fact determines nothing except who gets the good PR heading into New Hampshire. The totals are reported via phone to the state party, who then is supposed to tell the breathlessly waiting world the outcome.
At least that’s how it always used to work back in the days when I served as a precinct chairman, a delegate to all the conventions, and a member of the state central committee.
One last note: the state party did NOT report all of the votes for president in 2008. Alan Keyes was blackballed, and though he received votes all over the state in spite of that, they made no provision for his votes to be reported or tallied.
I hope that helps you understand the process better.
Yes, absolutely that helps, thank you very much. I still have some trouble envisioning how exactly it goes on (such as exactly how the delegates work witha non binding vote), but I have a much better understanding. So I’m curious, what advantage is there, if any, over the normal ballot casting primaries. I know that may not be a question you can necessarily answer, I’m just wondering why do all of that complicated stuff and not simply vote with a ballot. When you were precint chairman, did you see any advantage to it? I can already see some disadvantages, as you mentioned what happened to Keyes, I’m just curious. Thanks again.