Entering the caucus site in the Egyptian Ballroom at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas, the first thing I noticed was a flyer put out by the Nevada State Democratic Party on all the sign-in tables. It said “Know Your Caucus Rights.” Yet I quickly ascertained that the flyer really should have been called “Know Your Caucus Limitations.” It set out all the criteria for voting in the at-large caucus, set up at nine hotels for the predominantly Latino shift workers at the hotels and casinos. To attend one of the caucuses, you had to work within 2.5 miles of the hotel and show an employee card. That requirement I had read about. But the other requirements immediately jumped out at me: the attendee must “work during or within one hour of the Caucus start-time (11:30 a.m.)” and “sign a declaration stating that you could not attend your home Precinct Caucus because you work during or within one hour of the designated caucus start time.” I’ve been following the setting up of the Nevada caucuses for months, and I did not know about this rule. I wondered how many voters did.

The answer became clear soon enough. Within two minutes, I observed a woman signing in who said her shift ended at 8:00 a.m. The party volunteer working the desk told her she could not vote there and had to go home to caucus. Within minutes of that I saw several people being told the same thing. I became extremely troubled. One of the problems with caucuses is that a voter must be present at the site at the appointed time of the caucus or the voter will not be allowed to participate. What were the chances these people were going to be able to turn around and go back to their home districts in time to take part? Not high, meaning they would be completely disenfranchised. Of course, I understood that the purpose of the casino caucuses was to accommodate people working during the caucus, but what a formalistic, literal interpretation of that goal.

I approached the party caucus site manager, Matt Paul, and alerted him to the problem. He himself acknowledged that nobody knew about this rule, but the rule was the rule, he said. Another young woman tried to enter, but was told she could not because her shift started at 2:30 p.m. She was shocked and very upset. Paul came over as I stood by with a colleague of mine, a reporter, who stood writing everything that was said between the woman and the site manager, who tried to explain the situation to her very professionally, but she was incredulous. She had been told to come to this site.

At that moment, Matt Paul made democracy work the way it should. The party and the caucuses, and the at-large caucuses in particular, were about increasing participation and making access to the process easier. He called Democratic headquarters and informed them of the disaster in the making. They came up with a great, on the spot solution: they would allow anyone who signed an affidavit stating that they could not return to their home precinct in time would be allowed to vote at the casino caucus. I asked Paul if the word of this decision was going out to the other hotels. He assured me that the party headquarters was making this happen as we spoke.

This resolution made complete sense under the circumstances, where the rules had been unclear, and mass disenfranchisement was possible. How many people had been turned away in all nine hotels up until that point? In that moment, the cause of voting rights was preserved—given the low expectations for voting rights that we demand of caucuses, of course.

Tova Andrea Wang is a Democracy Fellow at The Century Foundation. View the entire series here.