A recent BMG posting by gubernatorial contender Joe Avellone should have raised serious questions for all Democratic party insiders. He pointed out how the convention 15% rule in its current form (15% on 1st ballot or out) was detrimental to the Party and certainly not small “d” democratic.
As a former State Committee member who can remember back when the original 15% rule was adopted, I would have to agree with Avellone’s contention. If the “15%-on-1st” were operating back then, John Kerry would have been shown the door in the Lt. Gov. race, he never would have been Lt. Gov. or had the platform to jump to US Senator.
I get that the 15% rule was adopted to cut down on fringe candidates…if someone could not achieve 15% of delegates within two ballots, they were dropped off…but, to raise the bar to just one ballot when the field is crowded with good, qualified candidates seems overly restrictive and makes the party look anything but inclusive. We are not a party for the favored few, but it increasingly gives that public impression.
Also, the convention requirement forces candidates to spend enormous amounts of money courting delegates and paying for convention expenses, paraphenalia and nonsense. This money could be far better spent courting regular Dems and Unenrolled voters across the state. There was a time when the media actually covered the state conventions in a big way…there were tv booths and crowded press sections…that made the expense somewhat defendable with “free” media results. That is not so today…it’s a one story barely and forgotten.
It is not a small effort to get 10,000 certified signatures in this state. Any candidate who can accomplish that deserves to get on the ballot. Using the funds and time wasted on conventions, a candidate would be able to focus on the electorate and do some real Party-building rather than just cow-towing around the state sucking up to the same old same old group of Party insiders (State Comm. and delegates and members of shrinking town committees) to get their votes.
We should use our convention to show off our candidates and introduce them to the Party regulars who can help them going forward. We should not have them competing against each other for a convention nomination that means little or nothing in the long run. We have 5 very good candidates running for Governor. Every one of them will get 10,000 signatures certified to get on the ballot. We should applaud them and support their efforts, not make it harder and more expensive for them.
Candidates have already crossed the 10,000 signature certification requirement before the convention…the people have approved them…so to have the convention of insiders try to undo that approval seems politically unjust (ie. Charlie Baker’s allies paring the field at the GOP confab)
“15%-on-1st” is not fair, inclusive or democratic. I would do away with it altogether, but in lieu of that would return to its original form where any candidate needed to prove 15% support within 2 ballots.
Next time you run into Sec of State John Kerry, ask him if he thinks 15%-on-1st-or-out” is good for the Party! He would know best.
If the 15% rule had been in place when John Kerry ran it also would have been a very different campaign strategically to reflect that fact. Also, I’m pretty sure there is state law involved which is why both parties have the 15% threshhold, though we have some flexibility regarding number of ballots. Also, there is grassroots element that does NOT require nearly the money that an all-public campaign would. One generally does not go on TV to woo delegates. Going to two ballots makes the convention nearly meaningless and there is absolutely nothing wrong with party activists having a role in shaping the race. Even that is pretty open as anyone can register as a Dem and any Dem can participate in caucuses. There is zero evidence that it kills the party; in fact I would argue that it strengthens it.
15% rule has nothing at all to do with state law…totally manufactured by the political parties to have or not have enforced.
Do you think pushing qualified candidates out really helps party-building?
I suppose someone could argue that because Mike Capuano was pushed out by the convention that chose Augy Grace for Sec. of State (who went on to lose to Galvin in the primary)…that paved the way for him to be available for Congress!
This process tests a candidate’s organization and I’m not sure I’d want them moving forward if they can’t get what is really not that onerous a threshhold. It’s low enough that mathematically you can still have up to six candidates. Beyond that it becomes a free for all and I’d rather not risk having so many candidates that the primary winner can get by with such a low percentage of the votes. It is also plenty democratic as any Dem can participate, but since state law opens primaries and petitions to unenrolleds it’s nice to also have a step where just Dems are involved in what is after all their nominating process.
In your counterfactual John Kerry example, had the rules been different, the strategies for winning would have been different, and the convention would have been different.
You do not know what the outcome would have been, or even if a different outcome would have been worse, either for the party, the Commonwealth, America, or even John Kerry. Maybe he’d have gone on to become president.
In the second place, 10,000 signatures is only “not a small effort” to campaigns not wealthy enough to sign a checkbook for them. Can’t was ask the candidates to do one thing other than that to get on the ballot?
Finally all your arguments, except for Kerry, could be made against 15%-by-2nd as well.
Of course no one can predict the future and certainly strategies are made for the rules that exist at the time…but, my point is that this 15% rule does not serve any party-building purpose in 2014 and actually accomplishes the opposite…rather than bringing new people who support new faces into the party, we turn them away. That’s why town/city Dem. committees are shrinking into AARP branches for old, tired political junkies. Have you attended any of these meetings lately (if your community even has them on a regular basis)?
There was a time when new candidates and the supporters they brought into the fray helped replenish and expand the party faithful…we need more of that, not less. I don’t think it’s helpful or organizationally healthy to have a few thousand insider (small “p”) party-goers and coatholders defining the choices the whole Democratic party membership will get in September. Eliminating the convention altogether and putting that money toward local party-building efforts would be money better spent.
Candidates who know what they are doing use the caucus process precisely to get more people involved. The Patrick campaign in 2006 mastered that. Your experience regarding party-building is clearly very different from mine. Like I said, I see it as strengthening.
In my case, and the cases of a lot of people I know, the 15% rule DID do significant party-building in 2005/6 as a number of us who never participated before were recruited by the Deval Patrick campaign – in 2005 – in order to have a strong presence as the caucuses.
Some folks here keep focusing on the period between the caucuses and the convention, but the real focus should be on the months leading up to the caucuses. That is when the organization building (and, in turn, party building) has to happen. That is when the new faces can be wooed and brought into a campaign – often taking up significant positions. All that, when done right, makes the 15% rule moot.
He was just more concise! 🙂
How does allowing any rich candidate to blow off the convention help build the party?
On the other hand, the current rule provides a strong incentive for candidates to reach out and recruit “new faces.” Guess what: They tend to stick around!
Calling grassroots activists “coatholders.” btw, is an insult to all the 2006 Patric delegates.
And yet, I can’t let this — That’s why town/city Dem. committees are shrinking into AARP branches for old, tired political junkies — go by without noting that in Holyoke at least, the caucuses were filled with young and first-time attendees this year. It was my first time doing it, and I’m a first-time delegate; many of my fellow Holyoke delegates will be both young and newcomers to the process. I can’t speak for the others, obviously, but I’d be shocked if I were the only one for whom early involvement was important because of the convention’s role in whether or not “outsider” candidates wound up on the ballot. Getting the information out so that people who might be interested understood what was at stake in time to participate was all it took to bring new people into the process.
All of which is to say, ideally the caucus and convention process can and should function as local party-building efforts. There’s no reason I can see to frame this one as an either/or.
Over 50 is not synonymous with “old [and] tired” — old, maybe (depending on your own age), but not “tired”. I see no particular reason why younger political junkies are preferable to older political junkies. I worry more about rigid and dogmatic political junkies than about their energy level, and my experience is that rigidity and dogmatism is unrelated to the age of the subject.
I think this entire thread is presenting a reasonably rich set of ways that the current approach is both helpful and organizationally healthy.
I get that the state convention doesn’t appeal to every Democrat — it certainly doesn’t turn me on, I’ve never attended one. At the same time, I’m not sure that “local party-building efforts” are harmed at all by the convention. In fact, I think the current process actually encourages those local efforts (I have, in fact, been to a few caucuses).
I see this as pretty much the same situation faced by national organizations such as the major religious traditions and various hobby and enthusiast organizations — I belong to the “National Model Railroad Association (NMRA).
These national organizations each have regional, state, national, and in some cases international conventions and “committees”. Some folks love that stuff and thrive on the process and atmosphere of all that. Other folks view all that stuff as “just politics” and scorn the whole thing in favor of going to church every Sunday, working on their layout when they can, and maybe gathering with a few like-minded friends on Wednesday nights.
I think a healthy organization welcomes and celebrates ALL those diverse personal styles.
I think the MA Democratic Party seems to have this balance about right. I don’t have a strong opinion about the 15% rule, but I do think it’s important the state have an annual convention — even if I don’t attend.
Christopher you are wrong the 15% rule is made by the party regulars both at the Democratic and Republican State Committees. In fact look at the mess the republicans are in now over their convention. Two ballots does not make the convention meaningless, what makes the convention meaningless is the process of which amendments are filed on the floor, that is why we were in Worcester so long at that convention it was not the two ballots?
I was at the convention I think you’re refering to. There were challenges and yes, multiple ballots. Amendments to our documents generally come in the off years. We’ve streamlined the balloting this year. Secretary Galvin has said he cannot put someone on the ballot not certified to have 15% so if the law doesn’t require it, it certainly allows it. Even so, I stand by the rest of what I said.
As has been pointed out here before, an earlier primary would make a lot of difference. I don’t think we are served well by having four or five candidates on a September primary ballot and having the winner get only 35% of the vote with seven weeks until the general. If this happened in June, the winner would have more time to get their message out to disappointed supporters of the candidates who didn’t win. However, for this convention, the rules are the rules. They were not changed, and it always bothers me when someone claims that the rules they entered the race under are “not fair”.
And it definitely hurt us in 2002. O’Brien had to run a longer, more costly and more bitter primary than she expected while Mitt had months to introduce himself to voters and run positive ads. By the time the general started she was weakened going forward.
We have a similar field to 2002 and it seems unlikely we will have a nominee that overwhelmingly wins the primary. I think an earlier primary and earlier convention would mitigate against many of these complaints.
Let’s see how the Massachusetts Democratic Party has fared with the 15% rule. Other than Scott Brown in 2010, we haven’t lost an election for federal office since 1994. We haven’t lost an election for statewide office since 2002. We hold 90% of the Senate and 80% of the House.
Since John Walsh came to the fore, the party has revolutionized its grassroots capabilities. A veritable army hit the doors for Elizabeth Warren. A great U.S. Senator who would have spent four months fending off Marisa DeFranco instead of Scott Brown without the 15% rule.
I’d argue the rule is bringing more people in than it’s alienating. Last month at my caucus literally dozens of Berwick supporters showed up. Some of them will be delegates in June. I’ve spoken to a number of them about joining the local Democratic committee. None of which would be happening if delegates didn’t matter and all you needed were signatures. Attending a caucus and serving as a delegate is a much higher level of engagement than signing a paper. Not to mention the thousands of applicants for add-on spots, at least some of whom applied to help their preferred candidate get to 15%. They’d be watching Game of Thrones without the 15% rule.
There’s also something to be said for institutional integrity. Unenrolled voters can vote in a Democratic primary. Sue Kennedy recently posted numbers showing that half of voters in recent primaries were unenrolled. There should be some point at which those of us who register as Democrats, join the DTC, pay our dues, and knock on doors get a say. That’s the convention.
I’ve got no problem with a gubernatorial primary that has “only” three or four candidates. I have a bigger problem with a Democratic primary that has some LaRoucheite or other oddball who paid people to collect signatures and was not otherwise vetted.
Finally, your arguments about dinosaurs in the party doesn’t ring true to me. I lived out of state for some time. I returned, volunteered on some campaigns, and was approached by the local Democratic leadership. Joined the local committee, continued to volunteer, submitted testimony to the platform committee, and I’ve been a delegate three years running. It wasn’t hard to become an “insider.” Just in the past year we’ve had several new people under 30. Perhaps things are different in other towns.
If anything gutting this rule will give is more insider candidates , more rich businessmen, and less Don Berwicks and Elizabeth Warren’s. Big name and big money candidates will buy the signatures they need.
Right now we have a Romney clone in IL who is paying homeless people to collect signatures for his term limits referendum and for his appearance on the GOP ballot. He basically overwhelmed his opponents with ads and snuck in, and since Quinn is on life support he may well be our next Governor.
The 15% rule gives the grassroots of the party the first say, and it forces candidates to work the grassroots, have one on one conversations, and become better campaigners in the process. I’m all for a Gabrielli or Pagliuca running in the race, or Steve Grossman for that matter, but those three worked the grassroots, called delegates, and earned their place on the ballot.
Up until last week I had delegates recounting phone call conversations with Avellone on Facebook and he was working for too, seems like he did the math, realized he lost, and is now complaining about process. Unlike DiFranck he has deep pockets and the ability to cause trouble , for the good of our party I hope he doesn’t.
You mean the Republicans have finally enacted a jobs program for the unemployed? That’s progress, right?
so let’s not portray them as middle class, lacking considerable wealth.
The amount of wealth a candidate has is not nearly so important to me as what that PERSON does with their wealth — on and off the campaign trail.
I see no indication that either Ms. Warren or Mr. Berwick have built their personal fortune by plundering other companies and bleeding their pension and retirement benefits — like Mr. Romney. Neither have I seen any indication Ms. Warren or Mr. Berwick have built their personal fortune by denying care to the sick or to the parents and loved ones of the sick, like Mr. Baker.
I note that the glowing media coverage of Mr. Baker neglects to point out virtually ALL health insurance companies profit by reducing the amount of money they pay on claims while increasing the premiums they charge for those same policies. It is, fundamentally, a seedy business that preys on the poor, sick, illiterate, and least powerful.
A segment of the 1% has been waging class warfare against the 99% for decades. Most of the “issues” that we spend so much time arguing become FAR easier to understand (though not solve) when viewed through the lens of that class war.
Elizabeth Warren was and is an “enemy combatant” for the 99% against the 1% in that class war. That explains a great deal about her political career and about her relationships with political figures — specifically, Scott Brown, Barack Obama, and Larry Sommers, among others.
Don Berwick is, by all indications, playing a similar role.
I’d like you to consider walking back this comment.
And, just to be complete, since that was a special, there were no caucuses, no convention, and no 15% rule. I doubt that it would have made a difference in the result, but I just wanted to get all the info out on the table.
Overall, of course, your stats on Democratic wins are correct. But the 15% rule wasn’t in play for most of them. There’s no delegate requirement to run for state House or Senate, or for the US House of Representatives. For those offices, you get your sigs, and you’re on the ballot. The rule is in play only for statewide offices – the 6 state offices, and US Senate. Of those, IIRC it hasn’t recently been a factor in any of the “bottom 4” constitutional offices, or in any of Ted Kennedy’s or John Kerry’s races, or the race to replace Kennedy or Kerry, which were both specials.
So, when has it actually mattered? It mattered in 2006, when a lot of last-minute jockeying resulted in Chris Gabrieli barely making the ballot. And it mattered in 2012, when Marisa DeFranco didn’t make it. The latter was arguably the only really significant event, since it freed up the party to back Elizabeth Warren starting in June. But, as I’ve said elsewhere, that problem can be much better addressed simply by moving the primary earlier in the year. Also, I have no argument with doing away with “open” primaries in MA. That’s probably a more effective way to increase party enrollment.
There is of course an argument that even when the 15% rule isn’t outcome-determinative, it still motivates both candidates and delegates. Maybe that’s true. But I think a bigger factor has been John Walsh, who I imagine with or without the 15% rule would have changed the way elections are run here. Would it have been harder for him to motivate people without the rule? I don’t know … maybe. But he (and Deval) motivated an awful lot of people who didn’t go to caucuses, who weren’t delegates, and who didn’t go to the convention. The “army” of door-knockers that you mention, all the people who held house parties, all the people who talked Deval Patrick and Elizabeth Warren up to their neighbors – some of them were delegates, but most weren’t.
So, I’m still not convinced.
that, at this point, it looks quite likely that at least one – and quite possibly more than one – qualified and attractive candidate for Governor will be kept off the ballot because of the 15% rule. If that happens, it will and should provoke a lot more discussion.
I don’t believe there are five people in this race I’d actually want as governor or as the Democratic nominee for governor. I daresay this is more about your dislike of the 15% rule than any genuine belief that we’ve got five corner-office-worthy candidates.
Without naming names, I think there’s a good chance that one of the four very solid candidates won’t make it. Do you think differently?
Assuming there are for the sake of discussion, the fourth-best candidate for governor in this particular year loses out because there were multiple other candidates with more support. This happens all the time in life. I’ll take the trade of freeing an Elizabeth Warren from a pointless primary, and giving party members whose primary is open to others by law some say, if it means that every twelve years or so the fourth-most-popular gubernatorial candidate fails to make the primary ballot.
Assuming we do have five excellent candidates, doesn’t that itself militate against the idea that this threshold rule is killing the party?
My impression of the five candidates are that they all more or less share my values, have impressive resumes, and IF elected would make a good governor. But before that can happen they have to get elected. No one should think that beating Charlie Baker in November’s going to be easy. It’s going to take the kind of enthusiastic effort by the grass roots that elected Sen. Warren, and so in my mind reaching the 15% threshold at the convention is a good test of a candidates ability to engender that enthusiasm. Everyone knew what the rule would be when they made their decision to enter the race. If you want my vote at the convention, stop carping about the rules and convince me you can win in November.
Bingo. Stop whining and start winning, and if you can’t win at least 15% of the most committed and capable activists in our party than you probably won’t win the primary and we should be leery about your ability to win the general.
More importantly, even if it is a bad rule the time to change the rule is after this process is over for this cycle. Let’s discuss it at the 2015 convention when no major offices are on the ballot.
Starting this discussion now is just a campaign ploy by a desperate candidate IMO.
n/t
Once every twelve years there is neither statewide nor a US Senate nomination and 2016 is one of those years. Even 2018 may end up being ho-hum if all our candidates are successful this year and seek re-election that year, including Elizabeth Warren. Odd years of course don’t include candidates and I’ve thought for a long time we should scrap odd-year conventions entirely in favor of Democratic Campaign Institutes.
I never said that the 15% rule gave us all of those wins or all of those volunteers. My argument is that the wins and the volunteers belie the main point of the original post: that the 15% rule is “killing” the Democratic Party in Massachusetts.
there’s also no particular reason to ascribe the party’s success to the 15% rule. Maybe we’d be doing even better without it, and maybe it’s not actually doing us much good, so why take the chance of sacrificing good candidates on its altar?
-Some semblance of purely party, not unenrolled, input.
-Forces candidates to court activists and get organized sooner.
– Get rid of open primaries.
– If you do #1 and you move the primary earlier, as I’ve advocated, candidates will be plenty motivated to get an organization in place and to court party activists. If they don’t, they won’t win the primary, so the desired result is achieved without the 15% rule.
when they get rid of open primaries. The post called for ditching the rule without changing the law to close the primary. Are we negotiating now? 😉
I do think that ditching the 15% rule should be accompanied by, at the very least, moving the primary to the spring or early summer. And closing the primary would be even better. And I don’t see either of those happening any time soon.
with either scenario. I believe the benefits of the 15% rule outweigh the negatives. The basic premise of this post that the Democratic Party is being hurt by the 15% rule is just historically incorrect.
Whether the election is by an open primary vote or a vote of party delegates, some candidates will win and others have their hopes dashed. Polls suggest that if the primary was held today, Joe Avellone would likely lose and Martha Coakley would win, basically because elections favor the insiders with the best name recognition MORE SO than the Convention. Unfair?
The 15% rule forces the candidates to engage with the grassroots. Without the 15% rule, the candidates would not be spending more time talking with the voters, they would be spending even more time speaking with the big donors. The big donors who pay for all those tv ads would have even more influence on picking our Democratic candidates.
About the only thing I agreed with in Joe Avellone’s post was that the convention generally is welcoming of progressive ideas. The bold ideas that help us successfully elect Democrats.
We started not from the premise that the 15% rule elects democrats (although it might, indirectly) but that it weakens the party.
All the ways that might be true are speculation: Candidate X won’t make the cut, so his/her supporters will go home/vote R/be mad etc.
But a 6-way primary could lead to an unfocused campaign and produce a weak nominee who won by a very small plurality; it could work to the advantage of wealthy insiders, etc. Equally speculation.
I do think it very unlikely that any candidate than cannot get 15% at the convention can win. And we have the very real, non-speculative example of Patrick 06 to tell us how the current system can confound the heir apparent by empowering the grass roots.
This is a useful point. Since we don’t have run-offs after the primary, it really is possible to have 6-way races that result in weak, unloved nominees.
Why, such nominees could destroy the party completely and utterly!
Moving the primary would indeed be helpful. Open Primary without convention hurdle would be even better. And as for the John Walsh factor, I think you are on the money, John W. delivered/energized the Democratic support needed for Deval and Elizabeth…the convention was just a stop on the way for Deval and Elizabeth didn’t need a convention.
…but Deval Patrick almost certainly did. It focused the campaign and played a key role in overcoming a better known opponent whose turn it supposedly was. If we were to do primary only I’d be even more inclined to close it than I already am. Registered Dems should have a key role in determining our nominee.
I respectfully disagree with your opinion that the convention was just a stop along the way. The caucuses and convention were the FOUNDATION of Deval’s campaign. John W has said that the caucuses are the Democratic Party’s gift to campaigns. I trained hundreds of people on how to organize for caucuses in the FALL of 2005. We had several hundred people at organizing meetings in late 2005 and pre-caucus 2006. Without deadline driven reasons to get people motivated we would have had significantly more difficulties in accomplishing this. JW used the caucuses brilliantly and it paid off in the primary and the general.
It is bad enough that we have to walk through them just to enter the convention each year, if one of those flaming idiots actually was able to get on stage and start spouting their garbage, I think I would walk out of the convention.
It can happen again.
It was a test case for a reverse Bradley Effect in my Electoral Politics reading (downstate WASPs and urban blacks voted against the ‘white ethnic’ names of the establishment candidates associating them with the Cook County machine).
Voting for one favorite is a pretty weak way to express how you feel about a large set of candidates, and a weak way to gather the collective opinion on those candidates.
A better survey might be to rate each candidate on a scale of 1..10. Or rank the candidates 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. That makes for a good survey, and there are also good methods for making a decision with that data and turning a survey into a ballot and election beyond pick-one voting.
We should be able to do this at the convention right away. I’d advocate this kind of election in general, but that reform seems slow to come. Inside the convention we should simply do what best serves our process.
Here’s the value of the convention: in modern politics, it is the closest the elected officials come to dealing with the people who put them there. Who do they see, all day?
1. Elected peers
2. Their paid staff
3. People who want/need something
4. Lobbyists
5. No one else
Who don’t they see? The activists who do the back-breaking work of signature gathering, canvassing, phone calling, etc. They NEED to see those people. Anyone know who Mardee Xifaras is? It was definitely good for our delegation to see her every four years at the national convention (until 2008, when she lost her spot).
I suppose one could argue about the 15% rule until it becomes a Holy War. I would accept a second ballot, because it gives the delegates a chance to reconsider, especially in a close race. (Baker for example would probably be sole nominee and not be dogged by controversy.) But let’s not pretend there are candidates who would set the world on fire who can’t get 15% of the delegates. Let’s have a little more faith in our process. I’m not familiar with the Kerry example, sorry.) But John Kerry was already famous and would have done something. He wouldn’t be running for a seat on the Beacon Hill Civic Association.
The field is not crowded. Five candidates for an open gubernatorial race is not a lot.
Re: money better spent, does an individual delegate really cost more than the $75 to get in? Total expenses may exceed the revenue, but I can’t imagine that the state party is really taking a bath on the convention. If it was, we’d hear talk of cancelling it a lot more often. But I hope we keep it, it’s a good thing.
Members of the Democratic Party should have the greatest say who their candidates should be. If you want a say then it is incumbent on yourself to become active. Republicans can vote in a primary and switch back to select the weakest candidate or choose someone who they think they can beat. Especially now when there is presently only one choice for Governor on the GOP side. Democrats should set the field of candidates, not the general voting public. They are free to select from those who have been approved by delegates who giving their time and money to be part of that process. The rules have been set and they should be honored. Dr. Avellone’s plea shows he can not interest activists in his campaign. He would have even less influence with the general public.
Re: the notion that the state convention should be redirected toward local party building:
In what way is the convention anything other than local party building?
It
1) forces local party committees to organize
2) attracts many new members to local committees who will stay active for years to come
3) gives them an opportunity to attract candidates, which means turning attention onto local committees and offering them opportunity to raise funds, find new members, etc.
4) offers local committees opportunity to network with other local committees nearby, as well as with the state party itself, fostering dialog which has been no doubt instrumental in the state doing things like making sure local committees can get affordable VAN access and making things like coordinated campaigns that much more likely
5) offers training and lots of break out groups every other convention that can be used to get people prepared for the next election, better understand messaging and communication, issues that are important, get involved in policy discussions, find new ways to keep committees active and so on and so forth.
To suggest the state convention takes anything away from local organizing is simple ignorance. Especially considering the fact that it’s the one darn event that keeps many committees across the state active to begin with, it may very well be the state party’s most effective means of helping local committees organize.
That’s to say nothing of the fact that the state convention is largely funded through the delegates, and very few of those delegates would take their convention fees and give that money to local committees if the convention was retired.
Re: the diarist’s post:
Even assuming you had to spend $5 a signature to get it done, which would be more than what I understand is the average for collecting signatures, that’s $50k. Not an incredibly high bar.
If a campaign wanted to show off its grassroots prowess and not pay signature collectors, it’s not all that much harder. Even assuming a fairly low signature return rate of 20 signatures an hour, that would take 500 campaign hours to accomplish.
10 people could do it in 50 hours apiece, just standing a random supermarket. 50 people could do it in 10 hours apiece. If it’s some great big campaign with lots of volunteers, 500 people in 1 hour.
If Marisa deFranco could get her 10,000 signatures, anyone could. So I simply reject the notion that it’s a high bar.
A few dedicated volunteers or a reasonably small amount of money in the grand scheme of statewide campaign is all it takes.
The state party is right to have a higher bar than that, and if anyone has a problem with the fact that the state party’s bar is higher, they can go run as an independent.
To diarists’s main point — 15% on the second ballot being fairer — well, maybe. But I’d submit the time to change it isn’t right before this year’s convention, it was a year or two ago.
I’m not sure I want to endorse accusing hlpeary of simple ignorance. An oversight? a mis-estimation? a flawed view? Well, maybe one of those.
are virtually synonymous to your preferred descriptions (“mis-estimation,” “oversight,” “flawed”), so was your wag of the finger in anyway necessary or contributory toward the general conversation?
No, not a synonym. Instead of being about the point of view, it is about the person.
Would you prefer that instead of calling your comment unpleasant, I called you unpleasant?
Probably not, I’d guess.
You feel as though I’m being unpleasant, feel free to downrate my comment and move on, instead of derailing a thread. Or send me a message and ask what’s up. You know my email.
For the record, the word ignorant has a very precise and rather innocuous meaning and it is not an insult to anyone when used as such. I use it to describe myself frequently on any number of subjects or situations and take no shame in doing so; we’re all ignorant on many more subjects than we’re knowledgeable in. In my choice of using the word, I also decided on using ‘simple’ to make it clearer it wasn’t a huge oversight, but rather a minor one.
the point was agreement with 95% of your comment and discomfort with those two words. An explantory comment is better in that situation than a downrate, which could be taken as disagreement with the entire comment.
“Ignorance,” despite its dictionary defintion, is often understood as an insult. I don’t think you meant to insult but you could’ve just said you had a different POV instead of suggesting hlpeary’s lacking basic knowledge. Similarly, “simple” ignorance could easily be taken as “there’s no possible explanation for this other than ignorance.” Though meant to downplay the word “ignorance,” it seemed to amplify.
Just my two cents.
might I counter-suggest you not reply to me?
I don’t see an equivalence between the words kbusch suggested (though I might not use those either) and “simple ignorance,” which suggests a more general lack of knowledge or understanding and does seem directed to the person. I agree with you on the substance, though.
.
There are two GREAT suggestions on this thread that, in my view, are FAR more important than presence or absence of the 15% rule.
1. CLOSED PRIMARY
2. EARLY PRIMARY
These two steps, especially taken together, will bring enormous benefits to our party and to Massachusetts. I think this is especially true for primaries for local offices, like the MA House and MA Senate.
I have NEVER liked the concept of an open primary. I think the choice of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY nominates for a general election should be made by DEMOCRATS. Period.
I also think the primary should be as early as possible, for all the reasons cited above.
Do we really want to tell half the electorate we don’t want them to participate in our primaries?
I can see the benefits, but even if most independents don’t vote in the Democratic Primary, it would be colossal public relations nightmare to deny them the “right” to do so.
They would just have to get off the fence and choose a darn side. This would be a state law rather than party rule change so it’s not like one party’s primaries would be open to unenrolleds and the other not.
doesn’t that mean that the parties should pay for the election and not the Commonwealth?
Voters who are unregistered can’t vote, yet still pay taxes for the election.
I think that so long as:
– The process for a new party to participate in each primary is transparent and straightforward, and
– The process for a voter to change status from “un-enrolled” to a particular party is transparent and straightforward,
Then I think the state can and should continue funding primaries.
After all, many of our nearby states — CT, NH, ME, and NY — have state-funded closed primaries, without apparent harm to either democracy or liberalism.
In my view, “unenrolled” is a choice made by a voter. I have no problem with voters making such a choice. I do, though, feel that a consequence of that choice is exclusion from the primaries, along with all the other party mechanisms, of each party.
I would like our party to always extend an open hand and welcoming hearth to voters of ALL persuasions who choose to join us. I think the last phrase of that should, however, be a necessary requirement for voting in our primary.
If half the electorate are actually closet Republicans, then YES, that is precisely what I DO want to tell them.
I think the primary is an invitation-only event. I don’t expect to be allowed to vote in ANY election for an organization to which I don’t belong. I don’t vote in the Kiwanis club, I don’t vote in the Rotary, I don’t vote in local church or synagogue that I don’t belong to.
I think we extend an INVITATION to every un-enrolled voter to join the Democratic party. I think we make membership easy, free, and convenient.
Then, I think we say that ONLY registered Democrats may pull a ballot in a Democratic primary. I prefer requiring that party affiliation be made some period prior to the primary — six weeks, for example.
I think the only “public relations nightmare” would be the usual cacophony of faux outrage from the usual talk-radio maroons, squawking primarily because Massachusetts Democrats might actually start acting like Democrats again.
I think the worst that would happen is that disaffected un-enrolled voters might coalesce around either the GOP or an emerging third party.
I, frankly, think that a bluer Democratic Party with stronger opponents would be good for progressives, good for Massachusetts Democrats, and good for Massachusetts.
I know a few people that are registered Greens and card carrying Social Dems who are registered unenrolled who might be mad at this, but then again, I’d rather them become Democrats than waste their time on lost causes.
I think a strong center-right economic, center-left social party could work in MA. It’s what our Republican party used to be, what the smart people in it want it to be again, and I’d welcome them as a third party in the middle and the rump Republicans can be taken over by RMG and the Tea Party so they can see how alone they really are.
If we want European policies it would help to adopt European politics, and that includes small, ideologically cohesive policies, no rules saying we can’t govern in coalitions in the legislature either. But let’s break the power that the DeLeo’s automatically extract with the false flag D next to their name.
Worth thinking about, I think.
In answer to your question, yes, I want half of them to feel that we don’t want them to participate. They should stop being wishy-washy and join a party.
I suspect a lot of Massachusetts independents are in fact moderate Republicans, but they don’t want to say that, because they don’t want to be associated with Rush Limbaugh, anti-gay laws, etc.
Or they could form a third party. That would be game on.