Green Party of the United States - National Committee Voting

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Proposal Details

Proposal ID	170
Proposal	Call for a Special Election to Fill Fourth Seat on Steering Committee -- Amended
Presenter	Green Party of Minnesota
Floor Manager	Jody Grage
Phase	Closed
Discussion	08/29/2005 - 09/04/2005
Voting	09/05/2005 - 09/11/2005
Result	Failed
Presens Quorum	32 0.6666
Consens Quorum	57 0.6666 of Yes and No Votes

Background

An election was held at the Annual National Meeting in Tulsa to fill four
open seats on the GPUS Steering Committee (SC). The results of that election
were announced and accepted as three seats being filled and one seat remaining
open because no candidate reached the droop threshold necessary to be
elected.

A special election to be held online was called for and nominations had
begun when the election team discovered a discrepancy between the droop threshold
that was used in the election, and the threshold called for in the GPUS
bylaws. The SC notified the NC of this discrepancy, declared Tom Sevigny the
winner of the open seat, and canceled the special election.

The Bylaws, however, allow for different methods of distributing fractional
transfers in tabulated votes. Either of these methods would have returned the
same results for the first three seats, while returning different outcomes
for the fourth seat.

The various methods of counting the Tulsa votes within our current by-laws
result in only Tom Sevigny or Kristen Olson being elected -- therefore, in
order to preserve Proportional Representation as intended by our bylaws, we need
to consider only Tom Sevigny and Kristen Olson as elected to fill the 4th
seat.

Assuming that we will fix our by-laws by the time that we have another
regular SC election (that is, by Summer of 2006), we should now seat both Tom and
Kristen only until that SC election (Summer of 2006), at which time they can
again run for SC, if they would like to stay on.

Because our by-laws specify for us to have "seven co-chairs", as members of
our Steering Committee (SC), and because seating both Tom and Kristen would
result in us having 8 co-chairs, a temporary amendment to our by-laws needs to
be part of this Proposal in order for both to be seated.

Proposal

In the spirit of finding an amicable solution, and to ensure the maximum
possible confidence and legitimacy in the electoral processes used by the GPUS,
the National Committee of the GPUS hereby enacts the following two-part
proposal:

1. Article IV of the by-laws is hereby temporarily amended to additionally
read: "Because the description of choice voting contained within Article VI
of these by-laws does not specify an accurate and unique method of counting
the votes, for the 2005 Tulsa SC election only, an eighth co-chair may be
seated if the different methods of counting the votes yield different results.
Any 2005 co-chair candidate elected by one such method, but not another
method, shall be allowed to serve only until the next regular election of SC
co-chairs (currently scheduled for Summer, 2006), at which time they shall be
permitted to again be a candidate for co-chair. This temporary amendment to
Article IV shall expire immediately after the next regular election of SC
co-chairs (currently scheduled for Summer, 2006) has been completed."

2. Per the above section #1, because one method of counting the votes for
the 2005 Tulsa co-chair election elects Tom Sevigny but not Kristen Olson, and
because another method of counting the votes for that same election elects
Kristen Olson but not Tom Sevigny, effective immediately upon passage of this
proposal, both Tom Sevigny and Kristen Olson are hereby seated as co-chairs.
They shall be allowed to serve in that capacity only until the next regular
election of SC co-chairs (currently scheduled for Summer, 2006), at which
time they shall be permitted to again be a candidate for co-chair.

Resources

Contacts: Kristen Olson and Eric Makela (gpus@mngreens.org)

References

None

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