Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Rita Stephan, left, who chairs a north Austin precinct, gives instructions during a caucus at the Travis County Democratic convention Saturday, March 29, 2008, in Austin, Texas. Democrats gathered Saturday for another phase of Texas' complex caucus system to decide whether Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton will win more delegates in the state. Other delegates are Gerald Strevig, center, and Esther Garza, right. (heraldonline.com)

Texas Democrats said Monday that the party's lengthy, sometimes-chaotic caucus system for picking delegates needs to be changed but shouldn't be scrapped.

"People who are not political junkies may come away feeling that this is a real contact blood sport – and I couldn't blame them," said state Democratic Party Chairman Boyd Richie.

"But it's a terrific party-building tool," he said. "We now have hundreds of thousands of new people we had no way of reaching before."

About 100,000 people poured into county and Senate district conventions last weekend in the second part of a three-step process for awarding Texas delegates to either Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama. The Illinois Democrat is poised to win a majority of caucus delegates.

The caucuses, in rented halls in Dallas and Houston and smaller venues across the state, were marked by long lines, frayed tempers and party officials communicating with bullhorns.

After watching a tedious credentials fight at his convention in Dallas, Sen. Royce West said something needs to be done to avoid a repeat in four years.

"If we're going to keep the caucus system, there should be an extended time period between the primary and the senatorial conventions," he said. "You program a period of time where credential challenges are determined."

Mr. Richie said he anticipates a vigorous debate at the state convention in June over resolutions to change – or scrap – the caucus process.

Two-thirds of Texas' 193 pledged delegates were distributed based on the popular vote in the March 4 primary and one-third through the caucus system.

Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote, but Mr. Obama appears to have won the overall delegate race in Texas thanks to a strong showing in the caucuses.

An Associated Press analysis indicates that Mr. Obama holds a 99-94 delegate lead over Mrs. Clinton.

"Senator Obama won the delegate fight in Texas," Obama spokesman Josh Earnest said. "That's the bottom line."

Garry Mauro, who is directing Clinton campaign efforts in Texas, conceded that the Obama forces probably did better in the caucuses. But he said the delegate gap could narrow – or close entirely – by the time the results are officially tallied at the state convention.

Mr. Mauro said he thinks the caucus process should be scrapped altogether and replaced by a system in which all the delegates are allocated according to the popular vote.

"At the end of the day, it's a cumbersome process, and I will be surprised if there's not a strong move to make some reforms," Mr. Mauro said.

In interviews Monday, state Democratic leaders said the party must streamline the system – using computers and bar codes to speed the delegate check-in process and giving the credentials committee more time between the primary-night convention and county conventions to verify names of delegates.

"We need to move our county and senatorial conventions to a date that's farther out to give people more time to prepare," said D. Shawn Stevens, vice chairman for the Democratic Party of Collin County.

But abandoning the caucuses "would be wrong ... simply because we were blessed with an overwhelming turnout," said Dallas lawyer Ken Molberg, the most senior member of the party's State Democratic Executive Committee.

"The caucus portion of our system is a way to get new people involved," he said. The caucuses were added in 1988 to encourage people to become more active in party affairs. They were sparsely attended until this year, when the nearly 1 million Democrats energized by the Obama and Clinton candidacies swamped the March 4 primary-night precinct caucuses.

Matt Angle of the Lone Star Project, a Washington-based group that supports electing Democrats in Texas, played down the problems on primary night and at the county conventions over the weekend.

"I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing for regular voters out there to see there is a lot of interest and enthusiasm in making a dramatic change in the national leadership," he said.

Looking toward the state convention, Mr. Richie said: "If a majority of folks there say they want to do away with it [the caucus system], it'll get done away with."

"Sometimes the labor in delivering a new party takes some time and some effort and some pain. And I think that's what we've got," he said. "So was it worth it? Yes, it was absolutely worth it."