Ha! I have a "mole" at the Washington Dem Caucus ... my brother, Rob. He is in Precinct KEN 47-1034 in Kent. You'll have to bear with me here. I've never published a diary before on this site ... so not totally sure what I'm doing. But I'll figure it out! This is too good an opportunity to pass up.

The first pic is the line when Rob arrived 45 minutes early. You have to look close, but if you look in the distance on the left side ... that's where the folks are going into the building. Nice loooooooong line, right?

Well, in the second pic he's getting closer to the building ... but look at the line that has built up behind him!

Aaaaand ... the third pic is inside the auditorium. They haven't started the caucus yet ...

Oh, dear ... my formatting isn't too, um, spectacular, is it? Heh ... will have to work on it!

Will continue to update as I hear from my "mole" ...

UPDATE #1: Hah! It is nearly 10:30 AM, and the caucus hasn't started yet. "Too many people," my bro says. And that's a GOOD thing. Especially since his wife, Oriana, who didn't think she could make it, has finished her morning obligations and has jumped into her car and is racing to the site as we speak. That'll be TWO votes fer Bernie if she squeaks in!

UPDATE #2: The pic below is the line waiting to get in ... 35 minutes after the caucus was supposed to start at 10 AM. Here it is nearly 11 AM and my "mole" says that the caucus still hasn't gotten underway.

UPDATE #3 at 11 AM: Aaaaaaaand Mrs. "Mole" made it!!! Yay!

Mr. "Mole" says, "By a cheering poll, it is Bernie, 10 to 1."

Oh, just got word that the caucus is getting underway ... stay tuned ...

UPDATE #4 at 11:20 AM: The crowd is breaking up into groups now. Sloooooooow going. Lots of folks to shuffle around ...

UPDATE #5 at 11:35 AM: No wonder this is taking so long. It was a tad "warm" inside the auditorium ... so they've taken to the great outdoors, although some are still inside. I asked Rob how they were split up, but apparently they've been put into small random groups ... not separated by candidate yet. And things are getting busy. My "mole" says, "Ttyl."

BIG UPDATE at 12:10 PM: The caucus actually did their voting in those small random groups. Rob says that a quarter of the 22 people in his group were naturalized immigrants, two were LGBT ... and that "white guys" were in the minority.

UPDATE #7 at 12:25 PM: Aha. Apparently absentee ballots are now being apportioned among the groups. That expanded Rob's group count to 37. FINAL group tally:

I asked Rob if he could gauge the crowd size, but with people all over the place, there was no way. And, unfortunately, Rob has to leave before the final caucus tally is announced.

FINAL THOUGHTS at 12:40 PM: Well ... this was quite fun. And writing this piece turned out to be pretty darned easy once I figured out how to get the pictures off my computer and over here. I may have to do this again some time ...

One quick thought on the caucus tallies from this one little group. In Washington, people were allowed to file absentee ballots if they had a legitimate reason (like work, disability, etc.) why they could not physically attend the caucus. But those ballots had to be postmarked by March 18th, one week ago. This is a perfect example of "once people get to know Bernie, they like him." Of the folks that waited to caucus till today ... the ones who got to know Bernie the best ... only 14% did not vote for him. However, once the absentee ballots were thrown in, the non-Bernie voters shot up to 19%. Food for thought ...