As a newly turned 18-year-old, I had my first experience at being a part of the electoral process at the Kansas Democratic Caucus on March 5. It was a very interesting experience.

The American people have to take many steps in order to have a presidential election. First, we need candidates. The first step to establishing candidates in some states is caucusing.

“The difference between a caucus and voting site is that voting at a polling site is a private matter,” Darnell Hunt, former candidate for Kansas House of Representatives, District 49, said. “Voting at the caucus is done in public.”

The caucus I went to was a meeting to determine how the delegates assigned to the 23^rd Senate District of Kansas would be distributed among the Democratic presidential candidates.

My experience caucusing was very interesting. I had no prior experience attending a caucus, and neither had my parents, so I was basically going in blind. Kayla Staley, senior, went with me as well.

When I walked into the JCCC gym at around 1:30 p.m., the first thing I noticed was the divide in the middle of the gym. On the right side were Hillary Clinton signs, and on the left were signs for Bernie Sanders. The Hillary side had signs that were hand-drawn, official signs, water bottles and a table full of cake pops and cupcakes. The Bernie side just had his official signs. The few uncommitted people were sitting on the bleachers connecting the Bernie and Hillary side.

Staley and I both had to get in line to register to vote before we wrote down our names for whichever candidate we were caucusing for. In the line, volunteers from both candidates came up to us to ask which candidate we were supporting.

Both of us were supporting Sen. Sanders, so we filled out “commit to caucus cards” for him. Those cards were just for his campaign to see how many people were caucusing for Sen. Sanders.

After we finished registering, we signed our names for our candidate and went to sit in the bleachers on Sen. Sanders’s side.

Then came the waiting.

“The registration line didn’t take very long,” Staley said, “but the waiting after registering took forever.”

Staley and I finished registering and signing our names at approximately 2:15 p.m. The line to register and sign names closed at 3 p.m., but people were told to stay and wait until the volunteers had finished counting names so the volunteer’s hadn’t made any mistakes and everyone’s name was counted.

After the line was completely gone, Hunt took the microphone. Hunt was one of the two main volunteers in charge of the JCCC gym caucus.

According to Hunt, they were expecting 1,000 people to show up, and they got around 968 people to actually caucus at the JCCC site.

Hunt’s speech was about getting all Democrats in Kansas out to vote, no matter whom they want to vote for. He then introduced Spencer Kerfoot, a young man running for a state senate seat, who talked more about getting out and voting.

The next step in caucusing was for a volunteer from each candidate to give a speech to the other side/uncommitted people in order to try to win their support.

A woman from the Hillary side came to the microphone and started speaking. She had multiple notecards in her hands and gave quite a long speech regarding why she was voting for Hillary. Unfortunately, some people on the Bernie Sanders side of the gym decided to be rude and call out “Stop talking” and “get to the point,” which made Hillary supporters visibly upset.

Because of all the rudeness coming from a couple of Bernie supporters, a man from the Hillary side jumped out of his seat and ran to the middle of the gym and started yelling at all the Bernie supporters. He would not stop yelling until Hunt told him multiple times to sit down.

Taylor Weber, senior, thought that the people shouting at the Hillary volunteeer were being incredibly disrespectful.

“I agree with their sentiments, that she should have spoken about why we all should vote for Hillary; however, [the Bernie supporters] should have just let it pass,” Weber said.

The man from the Hillary side who got up and yelled had a good reason because the Bernie supporters who were being rude had no right to yell at the woman. I felt really bad for her and embarrassed that some Bernie supporters were behaving so rudely.

After the woman finally ended her speech, it was time for a Bernie volunteer to give his speech on why people should vote for Bernie. His loud speech was all about why everyone would benefit by voting for Bernie Sanders, not just why he is.

Then, once both speeches were finished, the uncommitted had five minutes to choose a side before the final count would happen. After those five minutes were up, everyone was able to leave. The final count from the JCCC gym caucus was 686 for Bernie and 252 for Hillary.

All in all, my caucus experience was very interesting. I had no idea what to expect, and what I got out of the experience made me more excited to get involved with politics because it felt like my voice was being heard. I would love to try to get involved to the point that I could give my input on how to make caucusing better.

Every person who can vote should vote, and that includes caucusing.