wrog

How disorganized are the King County Democrats, anyway?

Note that King County Democrats and 1st LD Democrats are two separate organizations. You're a member of both (or rather, you'll be a member of both starting December 1).

KC Dems is a fairly large operation (King County being 1 million registered voters, roughly 30% of the state, that also happen to include the most heavily Democratic areas), so large in fact that they pretty much never have general meetings, which, with over 900 PCOs, tend to be an expensive proposition. Usually, there's just the reorg meeting in January and then the county convention sometime in spring of '08, both of which tend to have a certain circuslike quality, as you've already seen.

Most of the real KCDCC business is done in the monthly executive board meetings -- and it looks like you actually have a decent shot to get on that if you want to, seeing as most of the 1st district and, hence, most of the 1st District PCOs are actually in Snohomish County.

In a nutshell: Your district gets to send the KCDCC board two delegates and two alternates (male/female for each). If the district chair lives in King County (your current one does not, as far as I can tell), then s/he will be one of the delegates, otherwise it's vote for two out of the 4 male and 6 female King County 1st District PCOs available. (And sometimes these things just fall to whoever has time to go to them.)

The 1st LD organization is, of course, its own entity with its own officers and meetings. District orgs vary widely in terms of participation and resources available. There are the seriously gonzo nutcase ones like the 43rd (Capitol Hill, UDistrict, Wallingford, Madison Park) that pull in $30K/year and have PCOs for nearly every precinct. And then there are the ones in the deeply rural areas that can barely scrape together anything at all. Looking at the PCO fill rate and the PDC C4 reports, the 1st seems to be down at the weaker end of the spectrum, which seems surprising for what appears to be a heavily Democratic area. My guess is they'll be happy to have you.