I am planning today to go to the Republican Caucuses here in Washington state. Doors open in about 30 minutes, you have to be signed in about 60 minutes from now, and 90 minutes from now the “action” should get started.

Assuming I am able to, I will be live tweeting as things progress. The tweets will appear on abulsme.com at a few minutes before 00:00 UTC in daily summary form, or you can follow me on Twitter to get updates in real time:

@abulsme

If I understand correctly, there will be a straw poll vote (which will be what is reported first by the press, but doest really matter), then there will be speeches and such, and then delegates will be picked for the county conventions. Those delegates will state their preferences most likely, but will not be bound in any way at the next level. Washington has 40 delegates, 30 will be winner take all 3 at a time by congressional district, and 10 will be proportional based on the state wide vote.

For the record, I plan on expressing my preferences (I hesitate to call what happens at a caucus actual voting) for Ron Paul. Of the four remaining Republican candidates, he is my preference by far. In terms of caucus participation, I am a Republican for the day, but at this point I am not ready to commit to what I will do in November. We shall see. And there will likely be other choices besides the Republican and Democrat, some of which may be interesting.