[Pnp-wg] comments on draft report

[Fred]

I support the draft report, even with the mathematical introduction because 
it attempts to find the areas where there has been some consensus. And I 
don't like homogenizing reports to where they sound like they were written 
by a machine. I think Phil's amendment on what we haven't covered is fine 
too, although I am not in favor of amending things to death either. The 
report represents a contribution, informs the rest of the party of what has 
happened. Let's approve it and let's us continue the discussion.

I think that the methods for selecting delegates must be a mixture of 
population and Green strength (which I think is a consensus) because we are 
a party in formation.  We are trying to achieve lots of things at our 
convention:  proper representation for registered Greens; proper 
representation for states without registration; encouragement to new or 
restarting state organizations; proper representation for inadequately 
represented groups -- women, people of color, gay people, youth, immigrants.

And this doesn't even address the all important issue of class -- working 
class and poor people and ensuring adequate representation for them.

And these are just goals concerning representation. We also have goals 
concerning adequate open discussion, building support for the candidates;
independence from the corporate parties; networking, financing,etc.

I think that the interim report shows the progress of the group at this time 
and we should continue the discussion. The group has developed, if nothing
else, a sense of what the members on the group see as important and have 
worked through some issues so that the discussion can be civil and useful.

I know my opinion has changed through listening to the voices from around 
the country.

Fred
Michigan


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Steve Kramer" <scooter@guisarme.net>
To: "Greg Gerritt" <gerritt@mindspring.com>
Cc: "Presidential Nominating WG" <pnp-wg@gp-us.org>
Sent: Wednesday, May 04, 2005 2:19 AM
Subject: Re: [Pnp-wg] comments on draft report


Greg,

Thanks for your feedback.  My comments are listed following yours below.

On Tue, 3 May 2005, Greg Gerritt wrote:

> This entire section could be condensed to one or two sentences.
> Essentially
> it says no method is perfect, the rest of the discussion is liley to be
> ignored by most delegates and really does not contribute to figuring out
> the
> best way to vote.
>
Perhaps.  It wouldn't be the first time I've been long-winded.  :-)  What
I wished to do with this section was to make sure that whatever we
decided, we would not be taken to task for matters which are out of our
hands.  We can't change math.  So when somebody says, "Under the PNP WG's
method, X would be possible, and this is due to their dreadful bias
because they have been influenced by orbital mind-control lasers," or
somesuch, we will have a passage to point to.

> It should be noted that the reason for including Electoral votes was
> simply
> to make sure that all delegations were larger enough to reflect the
> diversity of the variousl states.  In other words it simply was used to
> set
> a minimum delegation size.
>
Well, expressly setting a minimum delegation size would be a much better
way to do that.

Kirit has suggested a concluding sentence which is less "absolute" than
mine - a "suggestion that alternatives to EV be strongly considered".  I'm
inclined to go with that unless there's some objection.

> Are you sure about this one?  And, I fail to see how using two population
> based measures is an invalid way to develop a formula.  Counting votes and
> counting elected officials are two methods of using electoral based
> measures. If you can use two electoral based methods, you can use two
> population based methods.  It is simply a matter or weighting them.

I'm sure, and I expressly narrowed this down to this particular purpose.
(The Huntington-Hill method isn't *way* off, but Modified Saint-Lague is
better...apologies to all for the propeller-head analysis; I'll explain it
all much better later.)  Again, using a straight population metric and
weighting it accordingly would serve the purpose much better than taking
two metrics, both of which are ultimately based on population (but at
different and slightly skewed proportions), and trying to use them both.

I should point out that I'm not saying (nor am I saying *we* said) "Don't
use population."  What I'm saying with this is, "If you are going to use
population, use something like the census numbers; don't do it this way."

> More than two people objected to this section.  Phil was rather eloquent
> in
> his comments.
>
Phil apparently did not object to the fifth section.

> Representative systems are also a true method of expressing the views of
> the
> Grassroots, and to include the statement below is to make a judgement
> call,
> not express a truth.  It is saying representative democracies do not
> express
> the will of the grassroots, and I do not believe that is a valid staement.
> The sentence should be removed, or matched by one saying representative
> democracies uphold the key value as well.

I agree that representative democracy can be used to uphold Grassroots
Democracy as a value.  My intent was to state some of the advantages and
disadvantages of representative vs. direct democracy which had been
discussed in our conversation.

> The other part that the paragraph in the draft leaves out is that the gpus
> is a federation of state parties, and the importance of the model of a
> federation in our success.  It is the state parties that are members of
> the
> gpus, not individual greens.  Individual greens are members of state
> parties.  The state parties poll their members, and then send
> represenatives
> to represent their will.  This appears to be one of the key disagreements
> in
> the party, whether we adopt an individual member model or a federation of
> state parties model.  The individual member model failed to thrive, while
> the federation of stae parties model both fits in better with American
> politics and has seen us grow.

I do not agree that a model for individual, direct democracy could not
work at all, nor that conformity with the existing state of American
politics should necessarily be an ultimate deciding factor in our process
creation.  However, I'm willing to consider language to this effect; I'm
only one vote, after all.

-- 
   Steve Kramer           ||         scooter (at) guisarme dot net
||
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