Pierce County GOP Convention - Another problem
April 21st, 2008 by Republican By DefaultFrank Rogers, a long-time Pierce County Republican and active member, has written an open letter to the state party chair, Luke Esser, regarding the handling of a vote at the convention last week.
I’ve been mulling over some concerns about that vote for the last week and couldn’t settle on how (or whether) to blog about it. Since this post is available, I guess I have a way to talk about it. What held me back from commenting was that I’m not well versed on parliamentary procedures at this point, so I wasn’t sure what to focus on. This open letter helped me find a way to address it.
After reading the letter I spoke with the convention parliamentarian (Alex Hays, see our discussion about another matter at the convention in the comments here.) His points about the County Executive endorsement vote were basically:
- Votes of this kind should be taken when delegates are separated from non-delegates to ensure that only those who should vote do so.
- Ballots should have been printed on colored paper prior to the vote and handed out only one to each delegate to prevent anyone from voting more than once.
- When blank, white paper was used and that paper ran out delegates were instructed to tear a page in half for other delegates to use, which could allow a delegate to vote more than once.
He also said that he saw no evidence of fraud from either candidate’s campaign or supporters or from convention staff.
On my part, I was handed a ballot by a sgt-at-arms from another district but my ballot was taken by the coordinator (is that the title, I should look that up one of these days) of the 27th district who looked me in the eye and then looked at my badge that said, “Delegate”. I can’t speak for anyone else about how their’s was handled.
I also stayed late to hear the outcome of the voting. There was a possibility for both candidates (Lonergan and Bunney) to be endorsed by the party and to carry an ‘R’ by their name on the ballot. Lonergan missed that opportunity by about 1.6 votes (he needed 40% of the votes according to county rules.)
Which brings up another question for me, was he required to get 40% of the total delegates attending the conference or just those voting in that election. Since it’s possible that some had left prior to that vote it’s impossible to know how it would have turned out if the requirement was to base it on total delegates attending the convention.
There was one vote that simply said, “Neither”. That vote was counted in the total but not for either candidate. But regardless of whether or not that vote was counted in the total, the outcome would have been the same (if the total requirement was based on votes rather than delegates at the convention.)
Another matter regarding this vote were the endorsements by out-of-county incumbent candidates for statewide office. Two of those candidates endorsed Bunney during their speeches, which I thought was very odd. The parliamentarian said they couldn’t do anything about that, however they did prevent the convention chair from doing so, which would have been inappropriate. I don’t know parliamentary rules well enough to know if that is accurate, nor do I know if or how those candidates were prompted to do so.
The reason I object to those endorsements is that, as incumbents in statewide office, they are de facto leaders in the party. It’s inappropriate for leaders, as representatives of the party, to endorse a candidate because it makes it appear that the party has already chosen a candidate, giving that candidate an unfair advantage. It gave me the impression that the WSRP and the KCGOP was exerting their influence where it didn’t belong.
All that said, I think the issue was handled poorly at every step.
