Lorna Salzman (via Owen B.) on the “no candidate” strategy.
NO OTHER CANDIDATE (NOC)
Lorna Salzman wrote:
“Dear friends: Watch your back. When I was in California at their GP plenary, GP co-chair Jo Chamberlain publicly announced the option of No Other Candidate (NOC). Afterwards, I asked her whether this going to be sprung on delegates at the national convention without notice. She said no, it was going to be proposed for adoption by state Green Parties for their own conventions or primaries.”
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I know no means through which a state party might entertain such an option legally during a state sanctioned primary vote- although there could certainly be manipulations for having the “No Preference” vote mandated by some states on such ballots to be misinterpreted in this fashion. In Massachusetts, however, the “No Preference” option shall only be used to reserve a larger field of uncomitted delegates. I have argued that it could not ethically be used in any other fashion.
My strong advice to state parties that shall be voting on GPUS presidential candidates in caucuses or conventions would be to realize that such options as NOC or NOTO should only be used in ways in which such have traditionally been used. In other words, it ought not be used to PREVENT nominations, but should only be used in an IRV/ STV process of ranking AFTER nominations are closed.
With regards to selecting delegates for the national convention, I would hope that states- in interests of promoting proportional representation of the grass-roots among their delegation- not use any IRV/ STV process at all. Otherwise, the states would- in essence- be replacing one “first past the post” winner take all system with another winner take all system instead. I must argue that this is NOT how Green state parties should understand the Grassroots Democracy key value with regards to the selection of delegates.
I would hope that such states would use a proportional representation system in choosing delegates, as the GRP shall, awarding delegates in accordance with a candidate’s portion of the total vote. If state parties were to use an IRV/ STV process in choosing their delegates, they would- in essence- be disenfrachising most of their membership and putting a lie to their critique of electoral college voting.
So, NOC or NOTO votes could not truly make any sense in such a process- of course- if the goal is for proportional representation of the grass-roots in choosing a delegation. If NOC or NOTO should be properly understood by states involved, then they should understand such to have their place in only those instances where ONE candidate wins ONE office. The process of selecting delegates is NOT intended for this within the states, but is intended to reflect the preferences of state party membership as a whole proportionally.
What follows is the GRP plan for delegate selection:
http://www.green-rainbow.org/Committees/Candidate_Development_Legal/Activities/2004/campaign_plan/2004presdelegateplan.html
Owen R. Broadhurst
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Lorna Salzman, a GPUS presidential candidate, wrote:
Dear friends:
Watch your back. When I was in California at their GP plenary, GP co-chair Jo Chamberlain publicly announced the option of No Other Candidate (NOC). Afterwards, I asked her whether this going to be sprung on delegates at the national convention without notice. She said no, it was going to be proposed for adoption by state Green Parties for their own conventions or primaries.
Heads up folks. This is part of the Stop Nader strategy. Please notify your state party members and stop this in its tracks. You might have your party secretary write to the cochairs and reject it in its totality before it gets off the ground. The notion that someone cannot, at their state or national convention, rise to nominate someone else would be another nail in the coffin of our civil liberties, just like the squashing of citizens’ rights to form their own political party and run their own candidates.
There is a streak of authoritarianism in the Green Party, of which this is another example. We need to be conscious of these things because they are usually couched in seemingly harmless language, with good intent and surrounded by nice pretty language that could lull us into senselesness if we dont read between the lines.
When I recently sent out a memo entitled Some Disturbing Things, I forgot to add this NOC item. Let’s face up to the sad and infuriating reality that there are some amongst our leadership who do not practice what they preach…to put it kindly. These people, and I would include the three cochairs (Chamberlain, Manski, Gerritt), may think they are providing us impartial information. But when they talk about NOC, and when they circulate an innocently appearing memo describing the various GP candidates, and inject into the paragraph about ONE of the candidates - David Cobb - the unsubstantiated and superfluous and pointless opinion that he has the most support among the candidates, then you know that there is more going on than we suspect.
I queried Gerritt about his proof that Cobb had the most support. His response was this: that Cobb had raised more money than anyone else and his team was more active. Is that a good answer? No, it is no answer at all. In fact, it is worse than no answer, because it proves that the intent of these three people was to promote one of the candidates over the others by inventing support that no one can prove exists.
Add that on to The Letter signed by 18 people (some inactive Greens) in which they failed to conceal their preference for Safe States, and you start to get an idea of what is going on behind the scenes of the CC and the EC.
Your state and delegates need to stay alert. There are private meetings going on that have to do with PARTY policy and process. These will be launched by these people even though they have no authority or legitimacy to launch them, and they will be launched suddenly, without warning. Keep your ears and eyes open especially with regard to the rules that will be promulgated for the convention. All states should be apprised of proposed draft rules and must be vigilant, to insure that the personal preferences of these plotters does not go unchallenged.
Lorna Salzman
Lorna Salzman
Lorna Salzman
718-522-0253; 631-653-3387
lsalzman@rcn.com
