[Pnp-wg] Trial Balloon Apportionment Formula

Sun, 27 Feb 2005 22:58:05 -0500

> Some would say conditions have changed since then, but nothing I have seen
> in the debate so far has been convincing that we made the wrong choice
then
> or that it is not still the best model for building the green party.

I find the capacity of our last Presidential nominee to make the ballot in
only 6 states to be pretty convincing. At the national level we are now
officially a fringe party. The once fearsome Green Dragon, scourge of the
DLC, was laid low, dropping from 1st to 4th among the alternative parties.
If this doesn't convince you, you can't be convinced. There was no
grassroots support for the candidate, largely a result of a mostly
disenfranchised membership (which you claim can't be counted) feeling no
motivation to come forward and be counted as volunteers to carry petitions.
Even in Texas, our standard bearer's home state, and where previous
candidates with grassroots support had no trouble getting on the ballot
previously.

> work any better becasue in the last 100 years there are no American
> progressive parties that continued to grow like the Greens have for more
> than 20 years.

First off, I don't know how you count party growth when you deny that
membership can be counted. Like all anti-membership apportionists, you want
to have it both ways. You use the numbers when they support something you're
selling, and you deny their validity when they don't. The Green Party
contracted this year for the first time in its history. If you count by
electoral standards, it was the most spectacular failure in the brief Green
Party history with national candidacies, both by total votes received and by
the cold, hard fact that our candidate only polled 1/3 our "known" (that is,
registered) membership in the office's district, which is a record low for
any Green Party candidacy, local, state, or national, in our entire party
history. Specifically, our infinitesimally small growth rate in raw numbers
(and of course Greg doesn't recognize the validity of those numbers)
represented a real diminishment of our registration proportionally to the
total of all registered voters for the first time in our history. All other
years we grew spectacularly as a proportion of total registered voters. And
we will contract further in the near future as the aftershock of loss of
existing ballot status in something like a dozen or more states manifests
itself in a failure to run state and local candidates which in turn will
translate in a failure to attract new voters or registrants. Please wake up
and smell the coffee. The Green Party is in trouble.

Secondly, in the last 100 years, I give you the Socialist Party. Formed in
1901, ran first presidential candidate Debs in 1904, 400,000 votes. Debs
again in 1908 and 1912, when he got 897,000 votes. Party membership between
those years went from 13,000 to 118,000, and their magazine had 760,000
subscribers. Then they became the leading anti-WW1 organization in the US
and were heavily persecuted. In 1920 Debs got 920,000 votes despite being in
jail for anti-war activities. In 1924 the Socialists endorsed LaFollette on
the Progressive line, and LaFollette got almost 5 million votes. In 1928,
the Socialists went with their new candidate, Norman Thomas, and got 266,000
votes. Running Thomas again in 1932 they shot back up to 882,000. BUT THEN
WHAT HAPPENED? FDR, who had adopted some key Socialist platform items, in
particular jobs and social safety net elements, was supported by a large
segment of the Socialist Party to help make sure that the progressive
reforms of the Roosevelt Administration could not be reversed by a
Republican victory, and in 1936 Thomas only got 187,000 votes, then 116,000
in 1940, 80,000 in 1944. By 1956 the Socialist Party was down to 2,000
votes.

In other words, the Socialist Party, within the last 100 years and well into
the modern era, was doing great, much better than the Green Party and for
much longer than the Green Party, and then they sacrificed their
independence, promoted several of their planks through the "electable"
Democrats, and promptly disappeared from the political spectrum. It's
happening to the Green Party right now.

> Being the voice of history here,

Clearly you think so, but it's just as clearly not true. See previous
paragraph.

I know some people on this committee are concerned about my attitude in this
stand-off with Greg. But try to put yourself in my shoes. We are assigned by
GPUS to make studies, try to discern facts, and then make recommendations.
This can't be done if we're not willing to do it, or if our minds are so
made up in advance that facts don't mean anything to us or we reframe our
preconceived notions every time a contrary fact becomes too annoying. That's
the George Bush model, and being Green means being better than that. Greg
declares his belief in the population-based model is upheld by Green Party
election results being comparable in all states in all races, but the exact
opposite is true. Greg declares himself to be "the voice of history here"
and rejects erudite studies of third party history by claiming nobody has
grown as the Greens have and for as long in the last century, but the
opposite is true. These things are facts. I'm not making it up to sell my
model. I'm not even that sold on my model myself, and want to see it
improved. I do the research because I care, because I take my assignment
here seriously. I want to be able to believe that if we work hard and always
pursue the truth, that the Green Party can someday be, if not a majority
political force as we should all hope, then at least a significant enough
minority to play a role in influencing American policy as it does in other
countries. I don't want us to be a bunch of doctrinaire, self-indulgent, and
self-congratulatory semi-radical clowns. If we can't take ourselves
seriously then nobody else should take us seriously either. My children's
right to a survivable planet depends on the work we do here today. If I
could see that more people in this committee were as critical of Greg's
callous and belligerent disregard for the truth as they are of my attitude,
I might have an easier time figuring out how to tone myself down.

I'm asking everyone here to make a commitment to care the most about the
things that matter the most. Getting our assignment done right is the thing
that should matter the most. Without that commitment, we're just jerking
off.

Steve Greenfield
New York

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Greg Gerritt" <gerritt@mindspring.com>
To: <Pnp-wg@gp-us.org>
Sent: Sunday, February 27, 2005 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: [Pnp-wg] Trial Balloon Apportionment Formula

> There was an appeals process detailed.  It ws through the credentials
> committee.
>
> I am remembering more of why using membership roles is so unappealing to
me.
> After 20 years as a Green occassioanlly it takessome time to dredge up
> information out of the recesses of my brain.  Over the years there have
been
> two distinct trends in the green party around the allocation of
delegations.
> One was the individual membership model, the other was as a federation of
> state parties.
>
> The individual membership model ended up as the GPUSA while the GPUS
figured
> out that a federation of state parties made much more sense if we are to
> actually create a political party within the confines of the american
> political system.  Once we adopted the federation model (with the gpusa
> prettty much moving towards the dustbin of history) we set up something
> called the transition committee to work on how to apportion delegates as
we
> moved away from two per state and approached proportionality.
>
> With our history with the individual membership model determing
> representation, no one on the commmittee at that time, and it had members
> from all over the country, even considered that individual memberships
> should influence voting power.  We looked at population, elected
officials,
> votes in elections and came up with the fairest measure as being
population.
> Some would say conditions have changed since then, but nothing I have seen
> in the debate so far has been convincing that we made the wrong choice
then
> or that it is not still the best model for building the green party.
>
> So yes, I think population based models are the best way to grow the Green
> party, and I can be accused of being the voice of conservatism in the
party
> for continuing to advocate for them as the most appropriate way to build
the
> party. I have seen nothing to convince me that another approach will work
> better.
>
> Steve Greenfield cited a paper about how parties that use a population
based
> approach fail.  But he has not cited any papers to show that other models
> work any better becasue in the last 100 years there are no American
> progressive parties that continued to grow like the Greens have for more
> than 20 years.
>
> Being the voice of history here, I will remind us that big stae small
state
> arguements are more than 200 yuears old in this country.  Maybe the
solution
> is a bicameral legislature.
>
> greg gerritt  gpri
>
> > From: Jeff Peterson <peterson@lakeland.ws>
> > Reply-To: peterson@lakeland.ws
> > Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2005 16:50:35 -0600
> > To: Forrest Hill <forrest_hill@comcast.net>, Owen Broadhurst
> > <owen.broadhurst@gmail.com>, Pnp-wg@gp-us.org
> > Subject: Re: [Pnp-wg] Trial Balloon Apportionment Formula
> >
> > Forrest (and all),
> >
> > I appreciate your continued efforts to discuss our differences in a
> > civil manner. Thanks! I think we're coming closer to some understanding
> > on this delegate apportionment issue, though we're by no means there
yet.
> >
> > The problem is that we have only a limited number of ways to assess any
> > state's Green Party strength. And when we're trying to come up with a
> > way that allows us to compare one state with another, our choices are
> > more limited still.
> >
> > There are only two numbers that are available for all states: total
> > population and Green Party membership, by which I mean not voter
> > registration, but dues-paying (or not) folks who have filled out a
> > membership form to join the party. (Perhaps I'm going out on a limb
> > here, but I'm assuming every affiliated state has such a form.) I am
> > aware of and appreciate the arguments that using either one of these
> > alone might skew the allocation of delegates one way or another.
> >
> > Some of what I'm going to do now is paraphrasing, because, just like
> > Steve G. had trouble making meaning of Greg's data, I've had a little
> > trouble getting my mind around the proposal to use Green Party
> > registration as the primary determinant of delegate allocation. That
> > plan would have my whole-hearted support if the data were available for
> > all affiliated states, but of course it is not.
> >
> > As I understand it, you and Steve are in basic agreement that the best
> > approach is to use the registration numbers for those states for which
> > they are available, and then simply assign all other states two
> > delegates and let them lobby for more if they feel shortchanged. Do I
> > have that about right? This is the plan which would award California 100
> > delegates and Wisconsin 2* (the asterisk meaning we would probably want
> > to appeal) or, under Steve's Plan B, 200 to California and 2* to
Wisconsin.
> >
> > Just as a historical referent, California sent 132 delegates to
> > Milwaukee while Wisconsin (my state) sent  33. I'm not saying that that
> > ratio was necessarily correct; only that Steve's plan to shift it from
> > 4:1  in 2004 to 50:1 or even 100:1 in 2008 is not going to be embraced
> > with enthusiasm by my fellow Wisconsin Greens unless it is accompanied
> > by a pretty airtight explanation, which at this point I would not be
> > able to provide.
> >
> > Apparently the remedy for Wisconsin and any other state that felt like
> > they got short shrift under this plan would be to point to some other
> > evidence of Green strength such as the number of votes cast for Green
> > candidates. This strikes me as a fair way to gauge relative Green Party
> > strength -- works in Wisconsin, anyway, where we have ballot status.
> >
> > But now here's my question: If total votes cast for a Green candidate is
> > deemed to be a useful number in determining Green Party strength for
> > purposes of appealing Wisconsin's delegate allocation, then wouldn't it
> > also be useful to compare Wisconsin's best voting outcome with
> > California's for purposes of establishing a proper delegate ratio
> > between those states in the first place?
> >
> > I'll accept it as fact that Laura Wells' 410,000 votes in 2002
> > represents the best showing in terms of total votes that Greens in
> > California have yet obtained. I would hope that, for purposes of
> > comparison, you would not hold Wisconsin to a race in that same year
> > but, rather, let us pick our best showing to date. By coincidence, that
> > race was also in 2002, when Wisconsin Green Paul Aschenbrenner received
> > 114,955 votes in a four-way race for state treasurer.
> >
> > Now, when we compare those two numbers, rather than a ratio of 50:1 or
> > 100:1 we get a ratio of roughly 4:1. Amazingly, that is exactly the
> > ratio that obtained in 2004 when comparing California's 132 delegates to
> > Wisconsin's 33. Maybe the delegate apportionment process in 2004 wasn't
> > so undemocratic after all!
> >
> > I'll ask again: If those "best showing" vote totals are good enough in
> > your estimation to be used to support an appeal by Wisconsin of its
> > paltry two-delegate apportionment (in Steve's plan), then why are those
> > same totals not good enough to be used in establishing initial
> > proportions of delegates between ballot-access states from the get-go?
> > By choosing to use registered Greens instead of best showing, I believe
> > you and Steve have skewed your results dramatically towards your
> > respective states, and I don't think that will be acceptable to many of
> > us. (Not accusing you of anything here, just saying I don't like the
> > outcome your proposal provides.)
> >
> > Of course, the problem with using a "best showing" method is that, like
> > counting registered Greens, it's a measure that can't be applied across
> > all the states, because it would disadvantage those with more
> > restrictive ballot access laws. So I'm not proposing my own plan here --
> > just pointing out some inadequacies in the one that seems to be getting
> > the most attention on this list.
> >
> > I do like the idea of an appeals process regarding delegate totals --
> > don't remember if we had that last year.
> >
> > Let's keep kicking this stuff around.
> >
> > Jeff Peterson
> > Wisconsin
> >
> >
> >
> > Forrest Hill wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Jeff and Owen,
> >>
> >> In the analysis you point to, I don't disparage voting strength as a
> >> relative measure of membership size, I just disagree with the ah hoc
> >> voting method used by the GPUS. The goal is to determine relative
> >> membership size of each state as a proportion of the total membership.
> >> If you are going to use voting  as a measure, then I suggest you
> >> simple count the number of votes cast for Green candidates. For
> >> example in California, Laura Wells received over 410,000 votes for
> >> controller in 2002 (about 6% of the vote). More people voted for
> >> Laura  than the sum total of all votes received by Green candidates in
> >> the other 49 states combined. Under the voting strength rules
> >> developed by the GPUS this result did not count toward our delegate
> >> allocation.
> >>
> >> You could also use the number of elected Green Party members, or the
> >> number of candidates run for office, etc. and then see how this
> >> compares with other states. For example, about 1/3 of the Green Office
> >> Holders live in CA (and if we are lucky we will elect the first
> >> African American Green to City council in May).
> >>
> >> A second problem with their voting strength method was that is
> >> multiplies the number of votes received by the presidential candidate
> >> (ironically Nader) by the percent of the state vote.This makes on
> >> sense because it penalizes the membership of a state where there are
> >> high concentrations of Greens surrounded by a sea of
> >> Democrats/Republicans/Lesser Evil Voters.  To put it another way,
> >> would you give less representation to a large group of Greens who
> >> happen to live in a region with a lot of non-Green voters, than to a
> >> few Greens who live in a region where their are few voters?
> >>
> >> Forrest
> >>
> >
> >
> >
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