A committee report is being presented Tuesday night, with a draft available at http://massdems.org/docs/Saxe%…
A final version of this report has been promised but was not on the site as of 2:30 Monday.
The DSC elects members in several ways, but the last 68 spots (in 21 categories) are chosen by the other members at a day-long meeting once every four years following the presidential primary.
This meeting has historically taken all day because of the drawn-out nature of the process. Part of the issue is that the voting has been done using a process with the following parameters:
Each voter casts votes for as many spots as can be elected (let’s call that number z). The top z candidates are elected, but only if they are over 50% of the voters. A second ballot is held with all un-elected candidates, where each voter now casts votes for as many spots as are left unfilled. After the second ballot, the bottom candidate is dropped from the race. This process repeats until every seat is filled.
This process requires multiple ballots, especially for some of the larger categories. This is time-consuming, and there was attempt made last year to “interlace” the 21 categories to save time (in other words, while we’re counting this ballot, we’ll move on to the next race).
Also time-consuming is that nominations are done at the same meeting, complete with speeches by the candidates. This adds quite a bit of time to the process.
Among the proposals is to do nominations ahead of time, and to conduct the election using the same format we’re used to using in most elections: each voter votes for multiple candidates, and whomever gets the most votes wins, even if it’s less than 50%.
Because I am a candidate for State Committee (although elected through a different process), I would potentially be voting on these proposals as well as participating in this election meeting in 2012.
I’d be interested to hear feedback from anyone who cares about the election process, either in the abstract or as a participant in the Charlestown Marathon of a year ago.
Drop the majority requirement, which you alluded to. Majority makes sense for electing DSC officers, but I don’t think it’s necessary for DSC add-on seats. I ran for one of the four youth male seats. Three candidates got majority on the first round. We needed a second round, but the candidate who took fourth place in the first round ended up winning the second anyway. Even though I ended up being unsuccessful in my bid I would say objectively it would have been just as fair for the 4th place finisher to have been awarded the 4th seat on the first round, lack of majority notwithstanding.
Considering the impact that the DSC has on decisions which daily affect education, health care, public safety, taxes, and all manner of issues, a 12-14 hour meetings seems tiring but hardly onerous.
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p>Are there other reasons why the procedure should be changed?
A meeting that long could be productive, but there’s a real sense that it was 2-3 hours of real stuff and a lot of dead time.
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p>Most people just don’t function that well in the environment they found themselves in. So in that sense, any decisions that were made were less than optimal.
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p>For example, one of the proposals is to vote for all 21 categories at once, the way we vote for multiple offices in local or state elections. We’re all used to that, and it’s a fair method. It does, however, limit the ability of someone to run for multiple positions. So the DSC needs to decide on the tradeoff. Likewise with first past the post; as Christopher mentioned in his comment, it wouldn’t have changed the results of his race but it would have gone much faster.
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p>One of the proposals that I particularly like is the advance nominations. Again, this resembles what we’re used to; it’s used for the first 160 state committee seats, so it’s not an “unfair” method. This is especially true since the DSC provided an opportunity for people to send in a page of information for inclusion in a candidates’ book; this was probably the most effective means of communication with the voting members.
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p>In short, the proposals will make the elections more efficient but also fairer and (potentially) more transparent.
How many people are doing the voting? It looks like 321 people, right?
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p>You know who’s really good at counting and managing lists? Computers are. Everybody votes on computers in the room. Rent them and have many many of them. Laptops are easiest because they’re smaller and easier to move around the room for install and breakdown.
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p>Vote 1: everybody votes. Instantly after the last voter, the votes are produced: Big screen 1 shows who’s gotten 50%+1. Big screen 2 shows who’s still eligible to be voted for. Big screen 3 shows who’s been eliminated.
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p>Vote 2: held minutes after vote 1 is finished.
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p>Vote 3: see vote 2.
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p>You could hold 20 votes an hour with this system, which would knock many many hours from the process.
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p>In my opinion, make this change first. There’s value to doing the speeches that day because the speeches stay relevant and allows the speechmaker to include the most relevant information. Requiring 50%+1 ensures that everybody on the committee was able to get a majority of a vote, giving them a morally and philosophically stronger position because the majority of the committee (technically the majority at least 161 of 389) voted for that person.
Why on EARTH do you need TWENTY-ONE quota categories? I freely admit I have never understood the MDSC system. We have 80 – two for each senate district. We are responsible for our ‘territory’ for recruiting, support, etc.
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p>What do you do when you have 15 members from one town, and zero for others?
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p>All by myself, I could run for three different MDSC seats that I know of – if there are other categories I don’t know about, like left-handed, maybe five! We most likely have all of your categories – race, gender, age, etc., represented in our 80 person membership. What is the value of what you yourselves call ‘add-ons’?
I can’t speak for the party, but here are my thoughts.
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p>First of all, there aren’t really 21 constituency categories, only 11, but for each of these categories there are separate elections for men and women. The exception is the gender-balance category, which by definition would only have one sex.
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p>Some of these categories have only a pair (Veteran, Senior, Disabled, French-speaking, Portuguese-speaking). I would tend to agree with you that these categories are likely represented in the other committee members already.
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p>The youth categories probably would not be elected to the general seats and I think it makes sense to have them represented. The Labor and Gay/Lesbian seats represent particular communities of interest within the party.
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p>The two largest groups reflect the rules of the national Democratic Party. Historically, racial and ethnic minorities have been underrepresented on the DSC, relative to their voting strength in the party. As a result, there are seats created to elect minority members to bring their representation up to a set standard. Finally, the gender-balance seats are designed to even out the DSC between the two sexes. Because there are a number of ex-officio seats that are male-dominated (Congressmen and Senators, constitutional officers, for example), we need to elect women to balance them out.
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p>With respect to your comment about geographical coverage, we elect the original 80 as required by state law and then supplement those with another 80 elected by representatives of the local town and ward committees (that’s what I’m running for). These 160 members are responsible for the local party affairs that you mentioned. Sometimes the constituency members are involved locally, but not always. In addition, we have the 20-year members (anyone who has served for 20 years vacates their spot as a geographical or constituency member and becomes a member at-large, opening up the other seats for fresh blood) who may or may not stay actively involved.
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