There is much hand-wringing about disorganization at the convention. Real conventions are complex and confusing, and this one was real: no one know how things would turn out.
This convention planned to introduce a backup electronic teller system that could provide (unofficial) results in real time. Had it worked, we’d have known <em>something</em> sooner. It didn’t. These things happen. We’ll hear why it failed, and why the failure didn’t show up in testing, and we’ll learn from that.
It might have been wise to have a program of contingent speakers to fill the time during the vote count. There must be plenty of party causes and events — Progressive Mass, Blue Fund, BMG, Dem Dispatch, the host committee for next year’s convention — who would welcome an invitation to put together a five-minute presentation “to appear when and if the schedule permits.”
It would have been faster to have better-trained tellers. But our custom, as I understand it, is to appoint the most senior available members of city committees to be tellers, and senior members are not always biddable or subject to discipline. (Senior members are not always great in the loud voice and keen hearing departments, which can also slow things down a little.)
But even if the electronic count had gone swimmingly, we had *two* races that balanced on the edge of a knife. I think the gubernatorial contest for 2nd place came out to a 51-vote difference, and the AG race swung (unexpectedly) on a percentage point. So, even with the electronic system, we’d all have to wait until the slowest town reported — and then we’d have to wait some more while everything was double-checked.
If we’re to have a democracy and a Democracy, we need to vote and we need to make every vote count. Perhaps we could have a little more fun (and tastier snacks?) while we wait, but sitting, knitting, and chatting is not the worst way to spend a few hours.
Like you, I think the only real problem was a lack of back-up programming for the reasonably-foreseeable down times. This was my first convention, and I didn’t know exactly what to expect; now that I’ve seen it, it’s clear enough why in any given year roll call might take hours longer to finish than the schedule as posted states, or why it might take many hours to hand-tabulate ballots in an unexpectedly close series of races.
Out among the rank and file, the problem came down to a combination of lack of anything to do and lack of information about exactly what was happening and how long the delays were likely to be. If there had been interesting programming on tap to fill some of that time, and there had been reasonably timely updates about where we were in the process, most of the frustration I saw in my district would have been eliminated entirely. Information alone would have taken care of a substantial part of it.
It would also have helped keep people there, making it more likely that a second ballot could have proceeded without rebellion or resentment from weary delegates. There were people in my district who left before the count was finished simply because they couldn’t get any real information about how much longer things were likely to run: if they had had estimates they could and in many cases would have made plans to stay, but not even having a guess as to whether it would be ten minutes, two hours, or six hours made leaving the lowest-risk alternative.
If it takes you five hours to vote and count the votes, you’re doing it wrong. Many large organizations have elections for officers, and do it much more quickly and smartly than this. The Dems should dispatch some people to large professional organizations that hold similar representative assemblies/conventions to get some lessons. Bar codes on credentials would be a good place to start to speed check-in. If the convention were all I knew of the Democratic Party, I would say they have no business organizing a convention, much less a state government.
The teller I saw was arguably the youngest person in my district. Not that I’m complaining — he was organized, had good support, and got the process done as quickly as it could. However, other districts needed two hours to get the job done. I’d love to hear what they were doing in Third Essex and the Norfolk districts. The fact that the district of the party chair was an unholy mess throughout yesterday makes me worry about November. I stayed past 6:45 because I enjoy that stuff, but anybody who isn’t a diehard Democrat would disagree that everything went FINE.
A difficulty with bar codes is transferability of credentials; we elected specific delegates, and we don’t want them handing their votes to anyone else, for any reason.
Requiring proof of identity would answer that — and that’s the way Republicans want to run our national elections, demanding that everyone present their Official Papers for inspection before being permitted to vote.
There is a certain charm in the roll call, with one’s friends and neighbors there to vouch for identity and weed out impostors. (I’m told this really happens, by the way.)
Sure, it could be done better. In the not-too-distant future, we can probably have direct electronic voting and instant tallies; you get your gizmo at roll call, it gets locked to your fingerprint right then, and we’ll have instant tallies auditable to the individual vote. That’s technically viable now; it’s too expensive now, but that will change.
Mark, I think the voting should be orally, since so many delegates are elected based on their promise to support certain candidate(s). I will admit I don’t know the technology, but I’m not sure why you don’t get a bar code, verify it upon entrance to the center, and then when voting scan and use a touch screen. The screen could be read by the teller out loud.
One minor thing — in the seating, it would be useful to reserve a spot for the teller and whips. They tend to spill into the aisles. (I wonder how many whips lost their candidate votes by the disrespect they showed to mere delegates. Many seem to forget that while they have the job of recording votes and organizing the district, their first duty is to represent their campaigns admirably.)
Good point about friends and neighbors. I hadn’t thought of that. It works as a check on ID and does have a certain charm, to go along with our MA town meetings and all that.
Assuming a couple of hours set aside for voting, perhaps the solution is architectural as well as technological? With better communications and organization, we could move to the meeting rooms of the many nearby hotels that are filled with delegates and would surely give us a good rate. Each district could vote in a pleasant, climate-controlled surrounding with a lecturn, sound amplification, presentation screens and projectors, etc.
We could just get a bunch of pointy-headed professors, who as we know are abundant in the Democratic party, to organize it for us. I’m always amazed that they get it together to run a big multi-site event like the Modern Language Association convention.
That’s the part I want to know why takes so long. Aren’t you simply adding up 40 sets of numbers in each race? Also, I think after a certain amount of time instead of just saying if you need help let us know a party volunteer should be dispatched to the district to find out what is going on. Even the quorum call took some districts longer than it should have. I understand some districts were huge and that should not be the case. We have split districts in the past, but what really should happen is that add-ons be better distributed geographically rather than putting so many in Boston.
They are receiving page-by-page tallies. If you watched the voting, the tellers tally the count for each page in the ballot book, but do not tally the entire book into district results. I don’t know how they logistically record and tally votes in the counting room, but the process just seems to be inefficient.
…tallying votes before bringing the book up front? I assumed it was because he was adding up all the pages. It seems we could at least use bubble sheets and scan them into machines to do the counting.
Rumors that were floating around elsewhere (as our Coakley-Berwick delegates were certainly out of play) was that Grossman was trying to throw enough votes to Kayyem to get her on the ballot. Delays came in districts where Grossman folks were passing on the first ballot or delaying the voting to await instructions. The word of Kayyem’s defeat came when one of the whips told me they ran out of places where they could pull votes for Kayyem.
I don’t know if it was true. Anyone close enough to the source to confirm or deny?
Please if Grossman tried that he is a damn fool the rumor mill was alive and on steroids.
His failed attempt if there actually was one back fired as it usually does. with him coming off a convention where he has been running for 4 years and missing the mark of the last poll by 7%. His nomination will go down in the books with a big * and a foot note Candidate won nomination for governor with less then 50%
adding to that when every other race refused to hold a second ballot to save the roughly 25% left in the hall a 16 hour day he was the only one to refuse. Yes he won the nomination but, at what cost? He looked like a little kid unwilling to leave with out his ball. He got one with a big * that was a really low class move.
Either way we didn’t do a second ballot. Grossman needed the endorsement and was part of his strategy all along, and given that Coakley was neck and neck with Berwick for second rather than with Grossman for first I think the outcome makes sense.
First of all, he didn’t win “nomination.” That’s decided at the primary. He won the endorsement of the convention.
But the “didn’t get 50%” is just silly. The protocol was to have a second ballot. On that second ballot he would have gotten 50% easily and probably much more. It’s not his fault Coakley decided to withdraw, depriving the convention of the chance to vote.
That’s a plausible-sounding hypothesis, at least for a delegate who hasn’t got connections in any of the districts where this might have been taking place; it would account for what certainly seemed like excessive delays in finishing the voting in a handful of districts. In my smaller district we couldn’t figure out what could possibly be going on (we got to the point where people were trying to model the time it would take in big districts based on extrapolation from our relatively efficient process, building in delay factors based on more crowding and physically larger areas to navigate, etc., and even our most pessimistic or generous models couldn’t account for how long it was taking).
If it’s true, I’m not going to have vapors about electoral campaigns engaging in electoral strategy. But I’d still very much like to know, if only to satisfy my own curiosity. After all, it’s a question we spent a lot of time thinking about yesterday; it would be nice to get a definitive answer.
Anybody out there? Inquiring minds need to know, and all that.
Last minute horse trading does not sound right to me. I was at the Kayyem breakfast when she gave a short speech and I think it was obvious to all that she would have had trouble getting to 15%. I also heard (not sure if this is true) that she lost some delegates because they were students and did not bother to come to the convention.
It must be the academic in me, but I went ahead and voted for her because I thought she and Berwick had the most intellectually coherent positions and hers was closer to my own. I wanted those views to be counted. I am sorry to see her go! Now I have to find a new candidate.
Also, although it will sound trite, I have to admit that I think all 5 gubernatorial candidates are amazing people and I could have made the case to myself for supporting any one of them. Which is good, I guess, with the general election before us.
I think you’ll really like what you see…and he could use a knowledgeable Kayyem delegate to infuse his campaign with her great ideas on fixing correctional institutions (dismantling many of them!) and putting the emphasis on effective treatment programs (which Berwick has experience with).
… that is on my list to do.
Each candidate had reps in the counting room observing every team of counters. So 14 people looking and asking and questioning votes as they count 4 races in the same book.
In the past it was one race voted at a time and then the floor would vote the next while the counting was going on for the previous one fewer people in the counting room and fast turn over of the books and counts this also filled down time on the floor and allowed them to get the books ready for a run off. Trying to do all at once proved far more complicated and time consuming one challenge by one down ticket candidate could tie up all the races until decided.
Maybe this year’s problems were the result of a failed attempt at efficiency, with people thinking that surely having all four votes cast at once would make things faster rather than slower? If so, they’ll know better next time.
…had we needed to cast four separate ballots.
were in pairs, taking approximately 20 minutes per book. That was not the hold up. It was getting the books to the counting room.
In particular it doesn’t explain this: People could “pre-check in” starting at 9 AM. In my district (3d Middlesex; what a name…) I think most people were already pre-checked in by 10 AM when the official role call took place. So all that happened then was that the names of people who had not already checked in were called. This didn’t really take much time. And then after it was completed we sat and waited. It took almost 2 hours — almost until noon — for that process to be completed in the whole hall. That can’t have had anything to do with vote switching or any other fancy games, can it? Or am I missing something here?
I also think that a little well-placed technology could have greatly simplified and streamlined the whole process. But that first roll call just to see who was there took a wildly unreasonable amount of time. How could it have been that poorly implemented?
Just calling the roll in 4M wasn’t all that easy ~140 people from 5 towns seated up a steep section in the nosebleed seats. We had labeled it beforehand to at least seat people by town, to make it easier for the tellers. But it was still very hard to hear. If other large delegations didn’t seat people by town, I could see the roll call being a major headache.
Made a note to myself to at least make enough signs for my own town next year – only three of us but we were spread out way too much (didn’t help we had someone in a wheelchair who couldn’t even come up and join us). Good job!
…and although only 1 town (if my memory is correct) actually reserved seats, pretty much everyone sat near other people from the same town. That happened fairly automatically in any case — those were the people we tended to know the best. And you’re right — it was very noisy. So the tellers had to speak loudly. And people had to speak up. But mostly they did.
…if we could give tellers tour guide mikes that would be just loud enough to amplify within a few feet, but not so loud as to distract neighboring delegations. Some delegates who were far away from the teller in my district held up campaign signs to indicate their choices.
The convention worked, and it achieved logical, fair results. But it was far from fine.
If the idea of the first roll call is to determine if the delegate is in the hall by the 10:00 am deadline, this could be resolved by a bar code on credentials that is scanned as you enter the hall. That might save a few hours. When it comes time to vote if people were trying to scam by coming in with someone else’s credentials they will then be called out by their neighbors during the vote.
I had decent seats in the 2MI in section 107. Not on the floor but at least our seats touched the floor and were not up with the poor people in the rafters.
I am very disturbed by the treatment of our disabled delegates. Security guards should know that just because you don’t “look” disabled to them doesn’t mean that you aren’t and should be lied to about elevator access. Forcing people in wheelchairs or those who can not climb steep stairs that sometimes don’t even have railings to sit away from their delegation is not right. Did the party forget that separate is not equal?
As for long conventions and long speeches…that is what I expect and I am happy to stay as long as it takes. But I don’t like spending a fortune for bad fast food that I would never eat in real life. Typically I smuggle in food but I would like to not have to smuggle. Some years security throws away your food and beverages at the door and some years they don’t. Nothing to do with security of course, just the venues desire to have us pay $5 for a cold pretzel out of desperation.
…what the best way is to accommodate disabled delegates while maintaining seating with the delegation. I’m sure the venue as a whole complies with ADA requirements, that there is seating available somewhere in the arena for people with disabilities. However, given the assignment of seating by Senate district I don’t know how you accommodate wheelchairs. My district was definitely one of those not accessible, but you can’t fit every district onto the floor.
was there was insufficient effort to provide accommodations for delegates with mobility problems. The MDP has done a better job in years when it was a priority.