[LP2014PC] IMPORTANT: Please disregard survey prematurely sent out in name of LP Platform Committee!

Alicia,

  I don't know why I didn't receive a survey invitation either -- hopefully there is an innocent explanation. After mentioning to Chuck Moulton that I hadn't received it, he told me the subject title of the email that was sent out, and I checked all my folders and could find no message with that title. Chuck then sent me a link to the survey. However I was not able to look at the entire document without actually filling it out, so I still have not had a chance to view the entire survey, and would appreciate you posting it to the committee list so that we all have a chance to do so.

  At the time of our May 3-4 Indianapolis meeting, the idea of a survey was only briefly mentioned in passing. And discussion was only about *whether* a survey should be sent out (something I'm okay with, if it's done properly), not the specific form it would take or who would see the results. Rather than getting into that whole debate in Indianapolis, since the topic of a survey was not even on the agenda, I figured I would wait until such time as the idea was put forward as an actual action item and bring up my concerns again then. <i>There was no indication given or authorization obtained that you intended to put something together on your own and send it out without any further consultation with or approval of the committee.</i>

  In fact you should have already known there was not consensus around your previous survey methods, since I have not only raised such concerns about this in prior years, but had also expressed concerns at the beginning of this Platform Committee's term about both the methodology of surveying LP members and the distribution of data gleaned from such surveys, in a January 2, 2014 message responding to Aaron Starr's referencing a Platform survey sent out in 2008. That 2008 survey -- for which you as chair of the Platform Committee that year were apparently responsible -- had a "leading questions" problem similar to that of the 2010 survey you apparently authored, as I detailed in my message (copied at bottom of this email).

  When the topic arose again recently, I did not initially find this message, because I'd sent it to committee members before we had set up the Yahoogroup for our discussions and thus it was not in the list archive. But based on the fact that no one on the committee disagreed with my call for an unbiased and transparent survey at that time, you -- by the same kind of logic you apply to the fact that no one spoke up to disagree with you in Indianapolis -- should have realized at the very least that there was *not* consensus for you to repeat the same kind of survey practices again this year, and thus you should not have acted unilaterally.

  Unless we correct this mistake, any results of the survey you sent out will have no legitimacy, and I will make a point of saying so at the convention.

Love & Liberty,
                                 ((( starchild )))