Chaos is how some voters described it.

Bedlam and kookiness also came to mind.

Texas’ Democratic caucus system, which selects some presidential delegates after the polls close, was tested Tuesday as thousands of voters showed up to participate and found themselves confused.

Emmett Northcutt, 90 years old, said he waited to caucus at the Grace Temple Ministry at 13th and Avenue H in Temple with about 75 other Democratic voters.

“Nobody showed up,” Northcutt said. “Nobody ever showed up to count the ones for Hillary and the ones for Obama.” He said he waited until about 8 p.m., and left along with about two-thirds of the people there.

Among the controversies that came up during election night in Bell County was confusion over who would have precinct conventions where.

Some Bell County Democrats were befuddled when their rather large precinct convention crowds were left out in the cold while Republicans held their meetings inside.

Teri Osborn was among the Democrats sent outside of the Temple VFW auditorium. She said some members of the group were defiant, some jovial after being threatened with arrest for trying to meet inside, so they set up tables in the parking lot.

The Texas Election Code says precinct conventions for the opposing parties must be held in separate rooms “so that communication from one room to the other is precluded.” When joint primary elections are held, the code says, polling places not suitable for more than one precinct convention may be used by the party whose candidate for governor received the most votes in the county in the most recent gubernatorial election. In Bell County’s case, that would be the Republican Party.

GOP Bell County chairwoman Nancy Boston said Wednesday the Republican Party shared information about the rules for the caucus locations, noting that, although they don’t share the political beliefs of the Democratic Party, they wanted to work together.

Bell County Democratic Party Chairman Arthur Resa said Wednesday he had received two different responses to the precinct convention question - one from the Secretary of State’s office saying that the Republicans had the first rights to the building for their meetings and another from state Democratic Party lawyers. “I went with what the state Democratic Party said,” Resa said, adding later “we got maybe the wrong answer from the state party.”

Another problem that Resa heard about was that people showed up early for the caucuses. “You can’t caucus until the last person has voted,” he said. He heard that in some areas supporters for either Sen. Hillary Clinton or Sen. Barack Obama were overly zealous and “trying to get it started early.”

Resa noted, “There’s always room for learning and we’re going to work on that.”

He said the number of people who were unfamiliar with the caucus system was overwhelming in some places.

At the Precinct 108 convention in Holland, Debbie Miranda said the event was “muddied with the lack of preparation.”

She said that doors for the caucus didn’t open at the reported 7:15 time, with caucus goers waiting until 8 p.m. even though the last voter left at 7:05. “When voters asked questions regarding the caucus process, no one knew the answer.”

Ms. Miranda said that although delegates were selected for the presidential candidates there were no elections for convention chair, convention secretary or delegation chair.

“I am truly disheartened by this experience,” Ms. Miranda said. “With all the publicity and importance of this election, Texas Democrats should have been on their game. Instead, we dropped the ball.”

Similar problems were reported around the state.

Marianne Rickabaugh, a 78-year-old retired teacher in San Antonio who voted for Barack Obama, gave the system a failing grade.

“It was just so disorganized. It was just crazy,” said Rickabaugh, who arrived a half hour before the polls were to close at 7 p.m. and ended up waiting until 9 p.m. for her caucus to begin because so people who were still in line to vote could do so.

Some caucuses didn’t end until the early morning hours.

Democratic state Rep. Sylvester Turner of Houston on Wednesday urged the state party to abandon its hybrid primary-caucus system, nicknamed the “Texas Two-Step.”

“People were clearly motivated to be part of the process,” Turner said. “But because the time it took to vote, the time it took to wait in line for the precinct caucus, the lack of space and the general confusion over the process, many voters today feel disenfranchised.”

The Telegram’s Jerry Prickett and Associated Press writers Christopher Sherman in the Rio Grande Valley, Michelle Roberts in San Antonio and Kelley Shannon in Austin contributed to this report.