Unfortunately, that would have taken a bylaws amendment. I was on the
bylaws committee, but our report was due 70 days prior to the
convention. Bylaws revisions can be proposed at the convention, but
they require a 2/3 majority to pass, unlike the bylaws committee
report's recommendations which only require a simple majority. I
suggest lobbying next year's bylaws committee for that change, so we can
vote on it at next year's convention (probably in Long Beach), and if it
passes, it would take effect for the 2011 convention. I'd vote for it,
BTW. I've paid way too much in travel expenses in the past year for LPC
stuff given how little (if any at all) the LPC has actually accomplished
for Liberty in the past year. All the progress, where it exists, seems
to be coming from the county parties.
Of course, the argument your proxy voting proposal will surely face is:
if someone's investment in the LP is so small that they can't show up to
a convention, why should they have a vote? I suppose the answer is the
same as shareholder proxy voting: I paid my money, so I deserve my vote
(even if it's only 1 share of stock or $25 in LPC dues). But I just
want to let you know why this idea has been knocked down every time it
has been proposed. The people voting on it are those who do care enough
to spend their time and money to attend a convention, and they don't
think so highly of those who aren't willing to make the same investment.
Maybe you could build a groundswell of support for it by writing a
letter to the editor of California Freedom, the LPC newspaper that goes
to something like 600 people statewide. In your letter, ask subscribers
who can't make it to conventions to contact their ExCom members and the
bylaws committee chair to voice their support for proxy voting. It
might get more traction that way, so that the next bylaws committee will
be more receptive to it.
Rob
Steve Dekorte wrote:
Rob Power wrote:
Of course, the argument your proxy voting proposal will surely face is:
if someone's investment in the LP is so small that they can't show up to
a convention, why should they have a vote?
The usual argument I have heard, and with which I have some sympathy, is
that proxy voters miss the debate and are thus making an uninformed vote
compared to those present. In fact, with a significant number of proxy
voters, the debate becomes irrelevant since a majority of the voters are
unable to be swayed.
The counter to that, of course, is that a vigorous debate could take
place before the convention so that proxy voters could actually make
informed decisions. It does make floor motions and amendments a
problem, though; proxy voters can’t vote on those, which raises
questions about what constitutes a quorum for those, or opens the
possibility for ambush shenanigans. Either floor motions have to be
forbidden or narrowly scoped, or proxy voters take a chance on not
having a voice on potentially important votes.
~Chris
Sounds like an idea worth considering. One concern -- what procedures
would be in place to guarantee the integrity of elections?
At a recent convention, I did a spot check recount of Secretary Dan
Wiener's tabulation of ballots in one of the rounds of voting, which I
was able to do because we were both physically present on-site, and I
was able to look at the actual paper ballots which had just been
handed in, immediately after he finished counting them himself. If
there had been a bunch of people voting by proxy, off-site, with the
ballots being mailed in electronically or otherwise, it's not clear to
me how effective oversight could be similarly exercised.
Love & Liberty,
((( starchild )))
That's a good point. How about making all votes public? So you vote
via the website and it shows complete lists of who voted for what.
Everyone could verify their own votes and people who wanted to verify
the votes of others could contact random samples of voters. I would
think that this kind of statistical sampling could effectively
establish bounds on the probability of vote fraud.
- Steve
If the conference hotel has wifi (and I suspect it's not hard to find
one that does), anyone with a $60 video cam and a laptop could stream
the debates to the web using a free service like JustinTV. If I had
time to go, I'd be happy to do this myself.
The fact that this hasn't happened yet is enough to make one wonder
how long it took political parties in the past to adopt technologies
like the typewriter or telephone.