CHEYENNE—Overflow crowds showed up for Democratic county caucuses across the state Saturday, prompting party officials to turn away voters in Cheyenne and arrange makeshift seating in Casper.
At the Cheyenne Civic Center, late arrivers were turned away when the party stopped allowing people to get in line at 9 a.m. Some said the huge crowd made it difficult to find parking in time.
“I’m so proud to see there are this many Democrats showing up in Cheyenne, but I’m very disappointed in the rules because we had difficulty parking and we had a long walk and they closed it off at 9 (a.m. MST),” said Vera Double, 71.
Party spokesman Bill Luckett said the party tried to accommodate people in long lines, but the process was governed by both state party rules and the Democratic National Committee caucus procedures.
State chairman John Millin said the party would accept provisional ballots from about 20 people who arrived late and would seek an agreement from the campaigns to count the votes. He said between 2,000 and 2,500 people participated in Saturday’s caucus in Cheyenne.
In Casper, the Holiday Inn’s 500-capacity meeting room filled up quickly and overflow participants were seated near the hotel pool, where they watched the proceedings via videolink. John Faunce, the Natrona County party chairman, said 967 votes were cast, the most in recent memory.
“There’s a lot of people here I’ve never seen,” Faunce said.
Colleen Follick, 48, arrived 90 minutes early for her first-ever caucus.
“This just seems like a great opportunity to participate in the process,” she said.
Participating voters said they were excited about the rare chance to make a meaningful vote in predominantly Republican Wyoming.
“Why I’m here today is that in Wyoming, this is probably the only vote that counts, because this state is going Republican in the general election,” said Matt Sachse of Cheyenne, a 42-year-old state employee who supported Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.
Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat who hasn’t chosen a candidate to support, said Wyoming voters were responding to Friday’s visits to the state by Obama and New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Saturday’s caucus was “the most energy that I’ve seen around any Democratic party activity probably in 20 years,” he said.
The day’s first results came from Niobrara County, the least populated county in eastern Wyoming. Half of the county’s 20 voters favored Clinton, while half supported Obama.
The caucus took place in the living room and around a kitchen table at the home of Everett and Fredda Lou Kilmer in Lusk.
“We can’t believe it,” Fredda Lou Kilmer said by telephone. “We usually have four or five people. Now we have 20 here today.”
In Casper, Cindy Rose said she and other registered Democrats were turned away because their names didn’t show up on the list of registered voters.
“Most of us have been voting in this state all our lives. We’re wondering what’s going on,” said Rose, a 50-year-old jewelry maker. “It’s a new county clerk. We’re just kind of thinking we’ve been kicked out of the process.”
Faunce said the party was relying on the county clerk’s list. About 15to 20 people were unlisted, he said.
“My hands are tied,” Faunce said.
There were also claims the Clinton campaign violated a ban on signs near the Carbon County caucus site in Rawlins.
“They told us no signs, no buttons, no stickers. We walked into the site and there was a huge Hillary banner and people wearing Hillary buttons,” Obama state director Gabe Cohen said.
Cohen said after they complained, local party officials allowed the Obama campaign to put up signs, too.
Jon Lipschutz, state director for the Clinton campaign, said he hadn’t heard of the complaints.
“What we’re hearing on the ground is that both the Obama and Clinton campaigns have signs very visibly posted and there is really no difference in the amount of visibility by either campaign,” Lipschutz said.
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Associated Press writers Matt Joyce in Cheyenne and Mead Gruver and Bob Moen in Casper contributed to this report.
