Caucus season starts this Saturday, with our state’s Republicans holding pooled precinct caucuses. To find out how the process works, we went to Wednesday night’s monthly meeting of the 34th District Republicans, who moved their regular meeting spot from Burien to West Seattle last year.

About 30 people were there. 34th GOP chair Chuck Rangel explained that while you can declare a presidential preference on Saturday, the delegate allocation will be determined in the May 24th primary vote, so Saturday’s caucusing is really about starting the process of choosing delegates for the district, county, and state conventions.

There are two locations this year – West Seattle High School (3000 California SW) for everyone north of Cloverdale, the Evergreen Campus in White Center (830 SW 116th) for everyone south of Cloverdale. As Rangel explained it, doors open at 9 for registration; bring a government-issued picture ID and your voter-registration card. If you don’t have your card, people with laptops will look you up to check your status.

Caucusing will start at 10 am, with the rules explained until 10:30, when discussion begins. By 11:30, caucusgoers have to start choosing people to advance to the next round, the district convention. Results will go to the county Republican Party offices. Dates for the ensuing conventions, all the way up to the national one, are here.

If you’re wondering about eligibility to participate, that’s explained here.

(Democrats start caucusing March 26th; we covered early info in our report on last week’s 34th District Democrats meeting.)