What happens at a Republican Party Meeting? Mostly democracy.

Just hours before flying to California, I was interviewed by LaSexta about Americans who are calling for “household voting.” Under this scheme, each family would cast one vote through the husband. Later in the month, El Pais published a lengthy feature about this same subject.

This idea is both extreme and constitutionally implausible. It is so far out in the fringe that no credible data exists to show if it commands any meaningful public support.

Yet, media as far away as Spain decided that this oddball story was worth covering. This represents an enduring tension in journalism: what is newsworthy (surprising, controversial, involves conflict and will attract clicks) is not always what is most representative (is the typical Republican talking about this?)

Wanting to tell a broader story about local Republican activists, I decided to attend the Santa Clara County Republican Party’s July monthly assembly in the heart of Silicon Valley.

The woman at the sign-in table gave me a hearty welcome and handed me a nametag as I explained that I am a Bay Area local who lives in Madrid and writes a column for a Spanish newspaper. She congratulated me on Spain’s World Cup championship; we chatted a bit while she made sure I had flyers for their upcoming events.

Friends greeted each other as they grabbed coffee, water, and other snacks and took their seats in the Campbell community center. Nearly 100 people packed the room.

If it weren’t for some colorful reminders that this was a Republican meeting, I might have confused it for a meeting of Democrats. I saw, “Make California Great Again” and “Newsom sucks” hats. A woman came by handing out booked titled “The Life and Teachings of Jesus Christ.” And just as the meeting was being called to order, pair of women walked in clad in jeans, American flag-themed cowboy hats and red T-shirts emblazoned with the word “Freedom.”

Santa Clary County Republican Party Chair Dave Johnson opened the meeting by urging the room to “take the ‘you shoulds’ and turn them into ‘I dids.’” I chuckled in recognition because I know first-hand that the biggest challenge of running a local party committee is all the people who want to tell you what you should do rather than how they can help.

Johnson also joked that Republicans needed to “kick Democrats in the shins.” Later on, he clarified that he meant campaigning harder, not literally kicking anyone. It wasn’t exactly the kind of revolutionary rhetoric one might expect after reading headlines about the American right.

The woman who handed out the books walked us through the tedium of delegate selection and proxy voting at the California state convention. She insisted on the need “real conservative” delegates who traveled to convention to be there in person and elect party leaders that better represented them.

The meeting wrapped up talking about a picnic in late August with Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate for California governor, as well as voter registration drives, phone banking and the usual get out the vote (GOTV) activities. Again, the same kind of volunteer work you’ll find at any meeting of Democratic Party activists.

The tension between the local party and the state party officials felt particularly familiar. Republicans complained that the state party wasn’t listening to grassroots conservatives and I’ve watched Democratic activists spend a lot of time squabbling over whether party leadership is representing the moderate or left wing of the party.

In fact, when I visited the Democratic Volunteer Center later in the week, I had a long conversation with a volunteer named Pam Salvatierra who wasn’t surprised when I said that the Republican meeting felt familiar. Much like Johnson was urging unity among the Republicans, Salvatierra told me that party committees need to stop beating themselves up for having differences in opinion among their volunteers.

From the canvassing they are doing, they know that both Democrats and Republicans alike are mostly worried about the issues that affect their daily lives such as high gas and food prices.

To be sure, I’m reporting from the San Francisco Bay Area, not exactly a conservative hotbed. Wanting to be sure I hadn’t missed anything; I mentioned the single household voting idea to two conservative friends. One had vaguely heard of it and the other knew nothing about it. Both found it extreme, unconstitutional and totally out of the question.

Grassroots democracy looks surprisingly similar regardless of party. The loudest voices on social media may shape headlines, but they are not the people who spend their Tuesday evenings drinking coffee in a community center, arguing over delegate rules, planning phone banks and persuading their neighbors to vote. This ordinary work of democracy is much more representative of American political life than the latest fringe controversy on social media.

This is the English version of my column, La Globalista, in El Español.