The speeches started on Saturday at 10 am and ended
around 12:30pm. This was much better
than 2013 when speeches ran all day. We
thought we might actually have enough time to vote for candidates and
resolutions.
Bait & Switch
Delegates were given a book of ballots to use for
candidates and resolutions. Each ballot
had circles next to numbers 1 to 10, like you would find in a number 2 pencil
answer sheet, but not really. So, if
these were machine counted, many circled the circle rather than fill in the
circle. If they were hand counted, the
vote was probably accurate. The first
ballot was used to elect the Chairman, but the other issues were determined by
“standing votes”. The ballot was fast to
use for Delegates to mark and hand off for collection.
When Randy Evans opened the meeting, he said Robert’s
Rules would be used in answer to the “rules” question. This unleashed some tactical
maneuvering.
The first was a motion to elect a “slate”. This failed.
The incumbents had published a slate, but the challengers didn’t.
The second was to take standing votes and forget the
ballots. This passed. These two issues took up most of the time
from 1pm to 4pm.
The haggling was started by the pro-incumbent forces and
was objected to by the anti-incumbent forces.
Randy Evans ruled in favor of the pro-incumbent side on the “Robert’s
Rule” questions.
Standing votes are usually preferred by the incumbent
forces to ensure that they have no defectors.
Ballot votes are usually preferred by the challengers to allow for
defections from the other camp.
Roberts Rules are usually preferred by incumbent forces,
because their meeting chairman decides the rules. Convention Rules are usually preferred by
challengers.
Gallop to the Barn
The other dynamic in these conventions is the tendency of
pro-incumbent delegates to want to do a “standing vote” and get out of there.
They aren’t interested in voting for officers other than the Chairman and they
aren’t interested in voting for Resolutions.
This year, they started leaving before the ballot was cast for Chairman
and were almost all gone by 4pm. Resolutions had to be voted on as a slate,
because we were losing our quorum.
It’s like Congress voting for a bill “before they read
the bill”.
Political party politics is co-opted and corrupted by
loyalty and friendship and enforced by aggression and intimidation in a
“top-down” dysfunctional state party. In
this case, they are compatible with our current “top-down” federal
government. I suspect that our current
party leaders just want a “top-down” Republican federal government. This party really needs to use the ballot
vote and put it in their rules, or soon there will be no challengers. Maybe that’s why they don’t use ballots. They don’t want any challengers.
County Parties need to operate “bottom-up” or they end up
with no members and minimum impact.
It will be interesting to see if Republicans will
actually take the Whitehouse in 2016.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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