Over 200 Boone County Republicans gather for local caucus: Trump dominates delegates
COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)
Over 200 Boone County residents showed up to the Missouri GOP Local caucus on Saturday. It marked the first time the Missouri Republican party has held a presidential caucus since 2012.
The Boone County Caucus was held at the Family Worship Center 4925 E. Bonne Femme Church Road. Of the 263 people who showed up Saturday, one person was for David Stuckanberg, 37 people were for Niki Haley and 216 were Donald Trump, who secured all 20 Boone County delegates.
By mid-afternoon, the Associated Press had already called Missouri a victory for Donald Trump. Boone County was one of 115 counties in Missouri to host a GOP local caucus.
Lines to get into the Boone County caucus began forming around 8:00 am. As more people began to arrive, officials were forced to delay the start of the caucus due to the long lines.
“I was really excited about the turnout,” former Columbia mayoral candidate Tanya Heath said. “It was so good that so many people came and participated and stayed through the whole caucus. Sure there were delays. It was our first time really doing it in this method.”
For the past 12 years, Boone County has used a "traditional presidential preference election" in the primaries. That changed after Missouri Republicans voted on a new piece of legislation that made sweeping changes to the state voting laws.
Lisa Gore is one member of the Boone County Central Committee who volunteered to check people in. of the volunteers She says that despite the delays voters were undeterred.
“The only people that I had that didn’t stay were people that didn’t actually have Boone County voter registration,” Gore explained. “I think that the people that were really here for the caucus and for the cause of what they believe in the republican party they were going to come in no matter what.”
Missouri has 54 Republican delegates available, 51 of those were awarded today at caucuses across the state.
Boone County has a total of 20 delegates, nine from District 4 and 11 from District 3. All 20 delegates went to Trump.
“A lot of people on the Trump side,” caucus chair Tony Lupo remarked as people filed to the side of the room associated with their candidate.
“I’m very happy with the result today and not surprised at all by Donald Trump winning that,” Gore said. “I truly think we in Missouri support him being on the ballot, obviously, and this is a great way to come into that [the upcoming election].”
After delegates and alternate delegates were selected caucus participants also had an opportunity to discuss the Republican party platform.
“ It was really good when we were doing those amendments to get people’s ideas from the floor, people debating those ideas, and people making amendments on the amendments I think it was a great democratic republic process,” Heath said.
One of the proposed amendments that passed says that the Republican party would like to establish closed primaries which would require all voters to declare what party they are affiliated with before voting in primary elections.
Another heavily discussed amendment would require all votes to be counted by hand instead of using machines. Gore says she has been looking into how the voting machines work since the 2020 election.
“If you can count the votes and control how the votes are counted the numbers, then you can control the election,” Gore told ABC 17. “I truly believe that we need to go back to hand-counting ballots only and they need to be indivualized to people's name because right now they only have a precinct number and they also should have a watermark. I think people need to have their confidence reinstated to support our elections as free and fair.”
