Each of the gubernatorial candidates is a credible candidate; I will support the winner after September. So, what’s wrong with the outcome?
The problem is that the process is dishonest – or looks dishonest. Votes delivered by power brokers to give razor-thin margins of approval matter more than the rest of our votes.
A fair and above-board process would have the following features:
The tallying should be complete in fifteen minutes. And then we could get on with convincing the electorate.
Please share widely!
Nobody can help it if it “looks” dishonest. I have no idea if it was, and I’m not going to pretend that I know.
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The counting process was laughable, I htink we can all agree. Not sure how to do counting in front of everyone — frankly, I suspect the delay was because the eight campaign representatives watching the counting were vigilant to the extreme. Doing it in front of 5,000 people would mainly give everyone of them a reason to feel robbed.
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I still maintain that if Gabrieli had not been on the ballot, the convention would have been a disaster, presented as such and interpreted as such. I can’t imagine any better way to play into the “corrupt, lazy one-party” theme of Healey then not even letting our own party members have a fair shot at power.
Of course we can help if it looks dishonest. Slow counting is a hallmark of elections that can be manipulated, and our conventions have a long history of being manipulated.
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We could count in public. We took the votes in front of each campaign’s counters, and that’s a good thing. Let the sun shine in. Cameras and microphones!
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If Gabrieli wanted a “fair shot at power”, he should have come to the caucuses instead of getting a free pass at the convention. We Mass Dems need him, but we need fairness more.
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What we really can’t help is how Republicans and the media will spin our actions. What we need is something we can defend without hairsplitting, for example, “Everyone knew the rules; everyone followed the rules; this is the outcome.”
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Last, the only way to get a fair result is to have a fair process. That’s the idea of law. Without it, we’re all just rationalizing our own interests.
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It’s actually pragmatically better for me to have Gabrieli on the ballot. He’ll hurt Reilly more than Patrick, and I support Patrick.
No counting of votes until all votes are recorded.
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This is a no brainer. At the very least, they can start counting but the candidates reps (and everyone else) must be incommunicado. You lock the three counters, three Dem reps, eight candidate reps, and three reporters in a room and no information comes out until all votes are counted.
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No changing of votes once voting closes.
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Is this permissible now?
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All challenges during the convention must be made in view of the convention by identifiable delegates.
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I don’t know if this is necessary. As long as there is a competitive race, the candidates have every incentive to watch what is going on.
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After voting has closed, the only admissible challenge is teller accuracy.
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Why? If a vote should be challenged, it should be challenged.
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Counting must take place in public view of the convention.
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Nah. You can solve it the way I explained above. Just have enough eyes.
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I don’t understand why it took so long though. This is really spreadsheet material. You take the pages from the counters, pop them in the spreadsheets, and you get your total. If each campaign wants to pour over every single vote (and in this case, the govs and Lt govs would have wanted to), go for it. By puting them in the room the way I described above, it wouldn’t even take long since they get a “head start”.
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The voting process was efficient enough while maintaining its transparency — but I don’t know why the tallying was so slow. There’s really no reason for it, and it results in delegates leaving before a second vote (if necessary), which really skews the results.
As any campaign whip can tell you, the results of the vote were known (or could have been known) within 10 minutes of the end of each teller finishing polling his or her district – probably even earlier. People with radios in my section were talking about Murray having 49% in the Lt. Gov. race at least an hour before the DSC officials slowly announced the results of each Senate district from the podium.
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All of that slow process of announcing results was window dressing to keep people interested (!!??) while the real dealmaking was happening behind the scenes and in a handful of districts where power brokers were getting people to switch their votes.
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The rule that allowed the manipulation of the outcome says, “Delegates may change their votes” after the second call in each district. Once that preliminary headcount is known, the arm twisters know how many votes they need to switch in order to get the outcome they want. As long as the ballot remains open for a given district, people can lobby individual delegates to recruit the number of votes needed to change the outcome for a given candidate.
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If we want a fair process, the spreadsheets you describe should really be something like a Blackberry in each teller’s hand to record votes as they are spoken (except we also need a paper trail!). Each delegate should get one vote and no chance to go back and reconsider – just like a real polling place. The instant results are fed into a central computer and the only permissible adjustments after the fact should be for operator or mechanical errors.
I had presumed the “slow counting” was so that they could certify the ballots.
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Just as MA election machines can tell you who won within minutes of the election closing, so could whips. But, the MA election results aren’t certified immediately — everything must be gone over to ensure there was no hanky panky or unintentional problems… and I had presumed that was the same story at the convention: let’s go over the results with a fine toothed comb to make sure that the results are precisely correct.
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Does anybody out there know the real deal, and can he or she back it up with a document outlining policy and procedure?
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Well, maybe not necessary but still better. If you like more eye, why not thousands more? Definitely not thousands more voices, however, hence closed circuit TV.
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Limiting challenges by type prevents the return of arm-twisting through challenges.
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There’s plenty of time for other challenges before and during the voting. Limiting some types of challenges to a particular period is already established; challenges against delegates who supported Republicans by rule had to be done before the convention opened. (I assume that the reason for that is to allow for a fact-based defense, but it could also be about treating ex officio elected officials more delicately.)
If you count quickly and out loud, how do you make corrections when the vote totals deviate from the agreed-upon script?
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Ironically, 4 years ago in the Healy vs. Rappaport fight for endorsement, people were being speeded UP, as the perception of the Rappaport floor managers was that they would do better with a QUICK count.
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They guessed wrong.
how the populace votes and how our legislators vote. Legislators use all sorts of Parliamentary maneuvering (recounting, slow-counting…) to gain a desired end.
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The populace (except for specifically noted historical cases of fraud — Boss Tweed, Boss Daley, Boss (Kay) Harris) has generally voted on secret ballots with no strong-arming of the voter. Clearly this is not how the convention works.
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But it is the way the game is played, and as a political party (and not a governmental entity) it can get away with the sort of strong-arm voting that would be considered unconstitutional everywhere but Florida and Ohio.
You’ve replied to an argument about how things should be with a statement of how things are. Did you mean imply that some things never change and that we should be philosophical about it?
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Why not? Remember how Hastert and DeLay have kept U.S. House votes open waaaay beyond the usual fifteen minute limit? On one of them (Medicare?), they even approached bribery on the floor of the House. It stank.
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Can we not stink like the Republicans? That’s all I’m asking.