[Pnp-wg] Specific apportionment plan
Greg Gerritt
gerritt@mindspring.com
Sat, 26 Feb 2005 06:15:18 -0500
RI was an enrollment state, but is no longer. RI has a consistent history
of under enrollment, and votes for green candidates consistently above the
national average at every level. .3% of the population of the US. About
700 registered Greens until disenfranchisement, 25000 green votes in 2000,
more than 1% of the national total (more than 3xs percentage in population)
for Cobb/LaMarche, and the highest percentage for any state senate candidate
in the country in 2004.
Over the weekend I am going to propose a very simple population based system
for the convention. 4 delegates per 1 million population. Approximately 1200
total that gives everyone including Wyoming, at least 2 seats at a
convention. For the CC I am going to propose to a more appropriate body one
seat per 1 million population with a minimum of 2 delegates per state. That
would give CA 35 seats, NY somewhere around 20 seats. The original body was
sized according to how many people did we think would be an appropriate size
for full debate on line. Considering that so few delegates participate in
the debate, mostly they just vote on line, and that the annual meetings are
designed to have as few votes as possible becauee Greens when they rush make
mistakees while the on lline voting system allows for time for reflection,
there is no reason to keep the size of the CC down to less than 150. 300
would allow us to replace the bounded proportionality with something
approaching full proportionality.
Given the crazy quilt of election laws we face, and the political cultures
that vary so much regionally, it is still amazing that electoral success,
mesured in victories, percentages of the vote, or however else you want to
measure, are much more similar across the entire country than dissimilar,
especially at the local level.
RI has some electoral sucess. We have one elected official, a city
councillor. We get consistently good showings at the polls. But we have
very few offices that are open to be run for and no non partisan races for
people to use as the beginning steps in their political careers. Wisconsin
demonstrates great strength in electing local officials because they have
non partisan local races. They also do not have partisn registration.
Maine has clean elections money, and a system that requires Green
registrants to be the signers of ballot petitions. They have 20,000
registered Greens. RI with the same population approximately does not
require Green signatures on ballot petitons, only requiring that signers be
registered voters. The political culture of registration is therefore
totally different. Maine Greens had to focus on registration to get
candidates on the ballot, in RI that is not a consideration at all, so while
we do registration, it is much less of a big deal. But our candidates,
while fewer in number, do almost as well in elections.
Some states face ballot access laws, registration laws, political cultures
that make their job harder. But given time all Green parties are going to
eventually end up pretty level, they are all going to have success and get
similar voting percentages. If we maintain our future focus, then it is
perfectly reasonable to award delegates based on populatian as ultimately
all the state parties will have equal success and to penalize or reward
state parties because of the ballot laws and political culture they find
themselves in, things not of their own doing, seems to be acquiescing to the
corporate parties rather than building a new world.
I wil present formal proposals soon. greg
> From: "Steve Greenfield" <bicyclesax@earthlink.net>
> Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 01:42:42 -0500
> To: <Pnp-wg@gp-us.org>
> Subject: [Pnp-wg] Specific apportionment plan
>
> I don't believe we shouldn't target 1000 as a delegate count. If we can
> achieve delivery of the same weight of votes in accordance with the same
> proportions with lower numbers of people, and we can, we should do it.
>
> For a lot of people, travel costs are an imposition. This is the Green Party
> and a lot of us live close to the margin. There was a lot of fundraising to
> send delegates last year. It's a lot easier to raise funds for 250 or 450
> delegates that 1000. There is a lot less fossil fuel burned. A wider range of
> facilities at a wider range of costs are available to a smaller group.
> Discussions can be better held with a smaller group. A lot fewer hotel rooms
> need to be reserved, and a much higher percentage of delegates can find floors
> and couches to crash on. These are very serious concerns. Too many delegates
> failed to materialize in Milwaukee. That's one of the things that has to be
> fixed. Aiming for a delegate count of 1000 is not the way to fix that.
>
> Yesterday I posed a rationale for a delegate apportionment scheme based on the
> idea of a one-delegate minimum and the right for every state to
> self-determines membership criteria and self-report their estimates. My total
> delegation size was 132, as opposed to Forrest's proposed 100, because his
> plan, by insisting on the cap at 100, reduced some states' totals well below
> their fair proportion simply to accomodate the cap and not in observance of
> any democratic principle. Phil suggests that two delegates per state should be
> the minimum, and I can accomodate that within the numbers I was planning to
> send by increasing my originally proposed total delegation size and
> recomputing each state's allotment based on the new proposed total size(s).
>
> There are no states that we refer to as "enrollment states" with higher
> assigned delegate counts that do not have an electoral record to back those
> numbers up. 9 enrollment states have conspicuously low enrollment numbers, and
> below-average electoral histories indicating that their low assignments are
> also justified. In all 9 of these states the delegation size would
> mathematically be 1 even in a total delegation of 1000. The two states in my
> plan that appear to have conspicuously low delegation sizes compared to their
> state populations (in accordance with their self-reported membership) which I
> believe could make a case for an increase based on statewide electoral
> histories are probably Wisconsin and Texas, but there could be others. Maybe
> Minnesota. My plan includes an appeals committee which would
> hear any state's request to renegotiate their delegation size based on any
> criteria they themselves would choose to best make that appeal. The
> combination of self-determination, self-reporting, and appeals process really
> should cover any questions about fairness to all states, regardless of their
> ballot access or state registration status.
>
> Note: the 24 states marked with an asterisk are known to have well under 1000
> Greens and identify themselves as such. Since this model requires
> approximately 3600 Greens to mathematically qualify for 2 seat, and 2700 to be
> "rounded up" to a second seat, all of them are assigned two votes simply
> because Phil wants to see a two-vote minimum in an estimated-to-be
> proportional system. I would go so far as to say that all of the
> non-asterisked 2-delegate states also don't come close to 2700 to 3600 members
> simply because I have never seen anyone in these states claim to have that
> many. The first three (TX, WI, and MN) are broken out from the rest because of
> my expectation in advance that all three of them could present mitigating
> data, such as statewide electoral results, to justify a larger delegation.
>
> The total number of seats for this model is 255, pretty close to my target.
> I'll call that Plan A. If we really wanted to get closer to true
> proportionality while retaining the 2-seat minimum, one could simply double
> the counts of the first 13 states and add one to Connecticut. This would make
> a total delegation size of 443, still far more manageable (and environmentally
> sustainable) in terms of implementing an actual convention than 1000. I'll
> call that Plan B, and put the totals for each state under Plan B in
> parentheses.
>
> Steve Greenfield, New York
>
> Plan A Plan B
>
> CA 100 (200)
> NY 25 (50)
> ME 12 (24)
> PA 9 (18)
> OR 8 (16)
> NM 6 (12)
> MA 6 (12)
> MD 5 (10)
> FL 4 (8)
> DC 3 (6)
> CO 3 (6)
> AZ 3 (6)
> AK 3 (6)
> -------
> TX 2
> WI 2
> MN 2
> -------
> CT 2 (3)
> MI 2
> MO 2
> AL 2
> GA 2
> HI 2
> LA 2
> -------
> AR 2 *
> MS 2 *
> IA 2 *
> KS 2 *
> NC 2 *
> NE 2 *
> NJ 2 *
> NV 2 *
> OK 2 *
> RI 2 *
> SC 2 *
> TN 2 *
> UT 2 *
> VA 2 *
> VT 2 *
> WA 2 *
> WV 2*
> OH 2 *
> IL 2 *
> IN 2 *
> ID 2 *
> DE 2 *
> NH *
> MT *
>
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