OPEN LETTER posted on the Black Hawk County Republicans' website
 

To those that attended or tried to attend the Republican Caucus at Central Middle School:

It's been a week since the Iowa caucus and I have been reflecting back on the things that went wrong and the things that went right.  I first want to apologize to all those that were not able to attend because of the traffic and parking problems.  I also want to apologize to those that did not wait until it was time to vote and left without doing so.  We, as the Caucus committee, have been looking at the events of the evening and will take what we have learned and promise to greatly improve our next caucus.  There were many things that attributed to the confusion and slow pace of the evening, but the one that no one in the state Iowa predicted, was the huge and enthusiastic turnout of voters.  In short, we and the rest of the state were overwhelmed by shear numbers.  The last caucus that we can compare this to was in 2000, when we had 2800 votes cast.  We used the percentage of turnout for that caucus compared to our current registered Republican base and estimated 2,500 would attend.  We counted just over 3000 votes this time around.

According to reports, we had 4,000+ that attended or attempted to do so.  Splitting up the event into different locations, unless you include the UNI-dome or McLeod Center, would have just divided our problems, not solved them.  Reports have since come in that many Caucus locations, for both parties, were overcrowded and had problems.  Another bottle neck in the evening was the huge number of people filling out voter registration forms.  We had over 750 that were new voters, changed addresses or switched parties that night instead of before getting there.  There was also a problem with the voter list which we received from the state party.  There were a good number of registered voters left off of this registration list, who then had to go fill out a voter registration form and get back in line.  They needed to do this according to the rules of the State Party.

In short; we hope that your caucus experience, whether it was your first or 21st, will not dampen your spirits and you continue to be involved.  The 2008 election year has just begun and there is much to be accomplished in order to elect our Republican candidates in local, state and national races.  We can do this if we work together toward this common goal.  Please help this cause by volunteering your time, attending local political events and supporting you local Republican Party and the candidates.

Thank you for your time.

Greg Tagtow

2008 Caucus Chairman

Jan. 11th, 2008