[Pnp-wg] Essay proving need for membership-based apportionment

[Elizabeth Arnone]

Too much information to digest.  I'm not a historian and this kind of stuff
puts me to sleep.  Sorry, no offence intended.

The quandry with 1 member - 1 vote is how do you get each member to vote?
It would be ideal if it was doable.

The only way I see that happening is by individual state conventions where
voting would take place, be counted and then delegates selected based on the
outcomes.

However, if that were the case, we probably wouldn't need delegates.  Each
state could report their outcomes to the GPUS and GPUS would make the final
tally by ranking.

So, in essence, we could have a national convention where candidates would
make their pitch and then go back to our states and hold statewide
conventions for voting.

A little far out but I don't see why not.

Liz Arnone - NJ
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Greenfield" <bicyclesax@earthlink.net>
To: <Pnp-wg@gp-us.org>
Sent: Saturday, February 26, 2005 10:38 AM
Subject: [Pnp-wg] Essay proving need for membership-based apportionment


The following was authored by Mark Lause, an historian and college professor
in Cincinnati, Ohio, and condenses information he uncovered while
researching a book. It is reproduced here with permission. It is my hope
that this information will help lead to a better understanding of why
general-population based models bode poorly for the hope of a meaningful
future for the Green Party. The main essay is followed by a brief Q & A with
Mark explaining the source material that led to these conclusions.

Steve Greenfield, New York.

Time for a little review of third party history....Bear with me,
please...I'll try to make some interesting long stories as bloodlessly
concise as possible...

Start right after the Republicans, a successful third party....

In 1871, the National Labor Union voted to organize a National Labor Reform
Party.  There were some areas that were very well organized, but they wanted
a national party.  They were convinced that more populous states should get
larger delegations at the 1872 nominating convention. Like the major
parties, they wanted the core delegations to be based on population, like
the Congress.  This meant that the states that didn't have that many labor
organizations were represented out of all proportion to their strength in
the movement.  In fact, the weighed delegations were pretty much present to
get the convention to nominate a progressive Democrat.  The idea was that,
with that kind of backing, one of the Democratic contenders would get a real
boost when that party's convention met.  There were some who argued that
doing this was the way to reach the bigger numbers, recruit, and establish a
real base for a new party.  Can you guess how well that turned out?  Anyone
wonder how long the National Labor Reform Party lasted?

Four years later, the farmers' organizations were pressing hard for railroad
regulation and bipartisan opposition created major third party
movements, especially in Illinois and Indiana.  These two parties decided to
cooperate in 1874-75 and launch a National or Independent
Party.  As with the earlier National Labor Reform Party, they decided to
structure representation just like the major parties...which meant that a
state that didn't have a movement would somehow get a delegation
representing its population and that they'd have voice and voice right
alongside delegates from states that did have a movement.  Sound democratic?

Well, these representatives of the farmers' movement in 1876 were
particularly interested in getting the labor organizations to vote with
them, so they were particularly eager to listen to the New York delegation
which promised to deliver the labor vote in that state.  In fact, the
convention essentially deferred to them over the presidential nomination.
Turns out the leading New York delegates were William A.A. Carsey and
Sanford Church from--can you guess?--Tammany and related tigers.  They got
the nomination for Peter Cooper, an aged old Jacksonian Democrat little
known in the areas that had real third party movements. Better still, they
also arranged the
nomination of a Democratic Senator for vice-president, later replaced by
Samuel F. Cary of the Ohio Democratic machine.  Programmatically, they
convinced the convention to adopt the call for paper currency under a
formula endorsed (but then being abandoned) by the Democratic Party. So,
they became "Greenbackers."

1880 was an odd case.  The Greenback-Labor Party pulled together a broader
spectrum of the progressive forces in the country than its
predecessors.  Even the socialists were on board.  The best explanation for
this was that the convention basically decided to represent the
movement rather stick to Congressional districts.  That convention voted
down proposals to nominate Democratic shills and went with a genuine
independent for president, James B. Weaver.  Most importantly, Weaver would
up trying to confront the Republican sellout of Reconstruction and the
campaign was alternately assailed and ignored in the national press, largely
owing to the ruthlessness of the Democratic Party, which felt it had a
chance to win were it not for these third party SOBs.  And, of course, the
party of slavery and white supremacism race-baited the third party movement
mercilessly.

In preparation for 1884, the Democrats (again out of New York) arranged the
launching of a different third party, the National Anti-Monopolist Party and
arranged for its nomination of Benjamin Butler, a Democrat (usually) from
Massachusetts.  It turned out later, that Butler's campaign was an elaborate
ploy to divide the votes that might be cast against the Republicans, but he
also seems to have been funded by the Democrats.  Much of what he said was
very positive and progressive, but his well-heeled operation pretty much
superseded the real third party movement.

Oh, but how they arranged this?  They simply persuaded the third party
movement that, in order to be taken seriously as a national
organization, it ought to structure its delegations like the major parties,
so that as many states as possible could be represented.  This,
of course, meant that places where there wasn't really a third party
movement were represented by delegations that would represent... well, who
do you think?

Then there was 1888...but, you know, the lesson's so clear that I really
don't think it's necessary to recite these annals of misdirection much
further.

Representing third party voters is certainly a step better, but proponents
of this seem to miss the point I keep trying to make--that there's not
necessarily a connection between those voters and the delegation claiming to
represent them.  There is no party organization here (ed. note: Mark is
referring to the Ohio Green Party), so there was no discussion and no
election of delegates.  Yet, we had "representatives" in Milwaukee going
100% for Cobb and safe states....

What should be represented at the conventions are members.  There are
several different ways to define that, but it should be flesh-and-blood
people who are actually connected to the process that claims to represent
them.  Anything else is an opening through which the enemies of insurgent
politics have always poured....

One member=one vote!
Mark L.
--------------------------------------

Additional comments by the author, Mark Lause, and source references.

I encountered the material while researching what became  "The Civil War's
Last Campaign: James B. Weaver, the National Greenback-Labor Party & the
Politics of Race and Section" on the 1880 third party movement.

The importance of the representation issue leaped out of the published
proceedings and accounts of the national conventions mentioned...

1872: The National Labor Reform Party nominated David Davis, who declined,
leaving the Democratic shills in the NLRP to change the
convention's nomination to Charles O'Connor, the New York Copperhead.
Representation of Democratic delegations from non-insurgent states was
essential to both the nomination and the establishment of a standing
committee authorized to nominate someone else without a new convention.
"Official Proceedings of the National Labor Reform Convention Held at
Columbus, Feb. 21 & 22, 1872," Workingman's Advocate, March 2, 9, 1872.


1876. National or Independent or Greenback Party nominated Peter Cooper of
Cooper Union fame in NYC rather than a leader of one of the real farmers'
parties in the Midwest.  They wanted desperately to involve eastern labor
organizations and seated Tammany Hall Democrats (not identified as such) to
speak on behalf of the workers, and even let them make the national
nominations in hope of establishing a truly national third party.  A brief
look at the New York Times identified these labor spokesmen as Tammany men.
"Rah for Rags" and "Base and Bottomless" Chicago Daily Times (both p. 3),
May 18, 19, 1876; "The Greenback Party," "The Greenbackers," and "The
Greenback Party," Chicago Daily Interocean, May 17, 18, 19, 1876, all p. 5.
For the most complete and favorable coverage, see "Independents" in
Buchanan's paper, the Indianapolis Sun, May 20, 1876, pp. 1-2, 5, with
editorial on p. 3.

1880. Greenback-Labor nominated James B. Weaver, a real insurgent.  In part,
this success reflected the decision to counterbalance the
formalistically determined state delegations by admitting bloc
representation by organizations like the Union Greenback clubs and the
Socialistic Labor Party.  The convention was covered in great detail in the
Chicago press--the Chicago Daily Interocean, Chicago Times, and Chicago
Tribune, June 9, 10, 11, and 12 1880.  For movement coverage, see NYC's
Irish World, June 26, 1880, p. 1, and the Winamac [IN] Greenback Journal,
July 17, 1880.

1884: The National Antimonopolist Party that nominated Ben Butler was
launched by the National Antimonopoly League, essentially NYC manufacturers
interested in railroad regulation for their own purposes; they moved to
start a national third party in 1883 in order to nominate reform Democrat
Ben Butler and suck the remnants of the Greenbackers into his campaign.
Butler himself acknowledged that his campaign was being funded by factions
of the major parties.  Mark W. Summers covers the Butler campaign in his
_Rum, Romanism, & Rebellion: the Making of a president, 1884_.

1884: Based on their earlier successes, all sorts of factions were funding
and fielding third parties, along with some real, very confused
insurgents.  The hard core Greenbackers and Antimonopolists reorganized as
the Union Labor Party, but their unwillingness to restrict
representation to the movement resulted in the nomination of A.J. Streeter,
not a bad fellow but a supporter of the Democrats who made a grand total of
one campaign speech that I could find.  The United Labor Party of the Henry
George movement split three ways as George himself crawled back to the
Democrats, and others sustained the ULP around the nomination of Robert F.
Cowderey, apparently in an effort to reduce the votes of the Union Labor
ticket, while yet another faction went to the Republicans.  All of this was
possible by fudging the representation to give undue weight to states
without reference to members in preference to those that did have lots of
members.  (This same year, some women suffragists ran Belva A. Lockwood on
the Equal Rights ticket, and the Socialist Labor Party ran its own late of
presidential electors pledged to vote "No President" in the Electoral
College.)

1892 and 1896: Then, there were, as you say, the Populists...which died at
the hands of the Democrats as well.

This pattern doesn't suggest any great, long standing conspiracy among
Democrats to treat third parties in this way.  Rather, these tendencies are
built into the political eco-system.  There are always some genuine radicals
wanting to pull the Democrats left and some genuine Democrats wanting to
pull their party left.  Both can easily see third party protest votes as a
tactic to get what they want.  However, whatever they build, they hope to
put up for sale.

Before us, we have a succession of third parties that have largely destroyed
themselves by the same mechanism.  It would be the smart thing for us to
avoid it.

Solidarity! Mark L.


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