They are divided up into precincts for voting purposes. A typical St. Paul ward will have about 12-14 precints. Each ward elects one city councilman for the city. Each precinct, which represents about 2500 registered voters elects precinct chairs, co-chairs, and secretaries at the caucus meeting for that precinct. Normally, a very small number of people are involved in that election.

Precinct officers have literally no duties. Some are active in ward politics and state senate district politics, but most do nothing until the next caucus is held. Now that Minnesota will no longer use caucuses in Presidential election years, it's very likely that the precincts will no longer actually have officers, since few will bother to show up to caucus meetings from now on.

I was the chair of my precinct here for about 12 years. I'm no longer going to participate at that level in Democratic (DFL) politics, though. We'll still have a caucus meeting in February, but I'm not going to attend. That means I won't be precinct chair and won't attend the senate district convention, and neither will most of the others I know who are currently precinct chairs. That's the one and only thing that is bad about switching to the primary system. I hope a way is found to make precincts important again, but I'm out as of this year.