First, be a registered Democrat here in the Commonwealth as of December 31. If you are a young person or are recruiting a young person, please be aware that you can register to vote if you are going to be 18 on or before the next election.
Plan on attending the caucus for your ward or town. Caucuses will be held between January 31 and February 8. Contact your chair now to get the information on when your caucus is likely to be scheduled.
Attend the caucus in your community. Arrive on time. Any registered Democrat from the town or ward can attend and vote.
If you don’t get elected, you can apply for add-on status if you qualify. The categories are youth, disabled and minority.
If you are not a delegate, the Democratic Party always needs volunteers.
As we get closer to caucus and convention time, I will send out more information. All the details are posted. You can read the rules beginning on page 14 of the Preliminary Call to Convention. There are forms for applying for add-on delegate status and other forms.
Many BMGers volunteered for the Obama campaign. Attending the convention and getting involved with the Democratic Party is a way to stay connected with the people with whom you volunteered. The bigger your network, the more effective you will be as a community or political organizer.
It is often not as competitive to become a delegate during an off year convention. I encourage people to first attend an issues convention, as a delegate or alternate, before attending a nominating convention.
To town and ward chairs and officers, if you have not received your caucus packet from the MDP, almost all of the information that you need to plan your caucus is posted. Most people with whom I have spoken received the information on Saturday. Especially if there has been transition in your officers, or if there have been delays in filing forms, it is important to contact the Massachusetts Democratic Party if your committee has not received the information.
Lastly, if your town does not have a Democratic Committee or typically does not caucus, the rules have provisions to accommodate these situations. If your ward or town does not have a Democratic Committee, with three or more Democrats, you can petition the Massachusetts Democratic Party and form a committee. If you have a chair, but a caucus is not called, there is a different petition process. But it is usually simpler to let your chair know that there are indeed interested Democrats who want to attend the Convention.
There are occasionally complaints that people don’t know about the deadlines and the caucuses until after they have past. The Democratic Party is committed to an open process and making information easily available to all Democrats. Towards that end, John Walsh has formed a Communications Sub-Committee and we are working to get this information out.
Although this is not an official Party effort, for regular updates on things Democratic here in Massachusetts, you can sign up for my weekly newsletter, the DDemDispatch by sending an e-mail to DDemDispatch-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .
Be a Social Darwinst event? I noticed the prejudicial pigeonholing at the bottom of a form.
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p> Race: ok we need a token
Youth: gotta get the kids interested, they’ll never know the line for hackerama takes 30 years.
Disabled: Throw it away, they should be happy we’re letting them breathe.
Seniors: A few tokens, they vote the most!
Unlike the way the Republicans gave a primo speaker spot in their national convention to the Texas Controller of Transportation for his universally valued insight on national politics, not because he’s the senior African-American Republican in the country.
“You did it too”.
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p>That makes it OK.
I thought of it as “your dudgeon is obviously insincere given your side’s record, so let’s debate the issues as grown-ups”.
Which turns my comment into kind of a snark; something I’m careful about NOT doing here. Apologies offered.
Frankly, the MassMutual Center is a pleasant venue and the key note speaker is an exciting choice. I appreciate the information.
AmberPaw, you just messed up the Recent Comments box, which was entirely for the same diary, which I think I’ve never seen before, for something else I’ve never seen before: the most boring, blase comment possible. Nice work. Now we have to start all over again!
It was an unbroken string of Rick Warren posts, until AmberPaw messed it up. I wonder what the record for posts in a row to the same diary is?
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Off on the right hand side is a box with the most recent comments. I glance at it to see what people are talking about. The other commenter was excited that all of the comments were on the same thread until Amberpaw mentioned this. I’m ruining it again, but thought I’d explain.