Green Party of the United States - National Committee Voting

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Ranked Choice Vote Details

Ranked Choice Vote ID	950
Ranked Choice Vote	2019 Apportionment Review Committee Election
Type	Secret Ballot Revealed at Close of Polls
Number of Seats	8
Ranked Choice Vote Administrator	Tony Ndege
Phase	Closed - 8 Elected
Discussion	01-03-2019 - 01-13-2019
Voting	01-14-2019 - 01-20-2019
Presens Quorum	Two Thirds of Active Accredited States/Caucuses
Candidates	Tony Affigne Charles Scherrouse Beth Scroggin Hugh Esco David Gerry Jan Martell Guy Benintendi Kristin Combs Cathi Woodward Mike Feinstein

Background

Apportionment Review Committee Mission Statement: To facilitate the adoption of a proportional system of representation that represents accredited state parties fairly, while assuring that all accredited states are represented on the national committee, the Apportionment Review Committee shall develop Delegate Apportionment Categories and a Delegate Apportionment Formula for establishing the apportionment of delegates to each accredited state party, and present them for adoption by the National Committee.

Duties and Responsibilities: Convene once every eight years, or more frequently as directed by the National Committee as per 8-1.6, to review and potentially propose revisions to the Delegate Apportionment Categories and the current Delegate Apportionment Formula.

Election procedures do not allow write-in votes.

For further information see https://gpus.org/rules-procedures/#08 and Proposal 599.

Candidate Information

Tony Affigne
Green Friends:

My colleagues in the Latinx Caucus have shown confidence in my diplomatic and organizational abilities, by nominating me for election to the Apportionment Review Committee, and I humbly thank them for that confidence. Many delegates do not know me well, however, and will want more information before casting votes for this important committee, so I’ve prepared this brief biographical sketch.

In the end, I hope you’ll find that my history of Green Party involvement, commitment to Green values, diplomatic experience and temperament, and engagement beyond the Greens, as a community, ecological, and peace activist, qualify me for the important task of working with other committee members to apportion representation among state Green parties and caucuses. My pledge to you is that in the work of the Apportionment Review Committee, I would strive to be fair, consistent, and inclusive.

Green Party Work

Although I was a candidate for Providence city council in 1982, and for Rhode Island governor in 1986, both of those independent campaigns predated the Green Party. My first Green duties were with the Green Party Organizing Committee in 1990, and in 1992 I was co-founder of both the Green Politics Network and the Green Party of Rhode Island. In later years I helped found the Association of State Green Parties, serving as chair of ASGP’s Accreditation Committee until 2001, shepherding 17 new state parties into ASGP (from the original 12).

In 2001, Lynne Serpe and I co-presided over the roll call vote at the Santa Barbara ASGP meeting, where the Green Party of the United States was officially established. For two years I served as chair of the International Committee, and as U.S. delegate to the Federación de Partidos Verdes de las Americas (Federation of Green Parties of the Americas). Since 1996, I’ve from time to time been a member of the National Committee, representing the Green Party of Rhode Island, and more recently, the Latinx Caucus, for which I was a co-founder and am currently a steering committee member.

Personal and Work History

As a longtime construction worker, I was previously a member of the building trades (Laborers International) unions, and as a public employee, a member of the American Federation of Teachers. My teaching experience includes work with resumed education adults and immigrant students, primarily from West Africa, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. I’ve taught in an urban tutoring program, a public four-year college, an Ivy League university, and two Catholic colleges, including my current job as professor of political science at Providence College. Over the past 27 years, my teaching assignments have included Black studies, Latino and Latin American studies, and environmental studies.

Thank You!

Please accept my thanks, for the time you’ve taken to read this brief biographical sketch. I truly appreciate your consideration. Should you decide to give me your vote, I assure you I will do my very best to make this apportionment process a positive party-building experience for us all. Thank you!

For a Green future,

Tony Affigne
Delegate
Latinx Caucus

Charles Scherrouse
I am Charles Sherrouse of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I have been involved with the Greens since the late 1980s. I have had various roles in the local Green Party, which include serving on the City Committee in 2003, 2004 and 2006 through 2010. I served on the state Steering Committee in 2011 and 2012.

I have been a member of the national Bylaws Rules Policies and Procedures Committee from 2007 till present; and of the Ballot Access Committee from 2013 till 2018, serving as co-chair for 2017 and 2018. I have served on the Election Tabulation Committee in 2017 and 2018, and have been a NC Forum Manager since 2015. I have been a delegate to the National Committee in 2009, 2011, 2014, 2015, and an alternate since then.

I followed apportionment discussions as a delegate in 2011. I have had exposure to the variations in state laws through work with the Ballot Access Committee. I have good communication skills, work well with others, and am comfortable working with spreadsheets in various formats (MS Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Google Docs).

Beth Scroggin
Beth Scroggin graduated from Boston University in 2007 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Secondary Math Education, and obtained her Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Penn State in 2009. She has been teaching math at a public high school for 11 years, and has been an active member of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state’s largest union. Beth has been an Advocate for Children and Education (ACE) and has attended training on how to effectively organize within one’s local union, as well as lobby government officials.

Politically, Beth became involved in the Bernie Sanders campaign in February 2016, making 3500 calls across the country and knocking on 1000 doors in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Afterward, Beth registered as a Green and co-founded the Chester County Green Party in October 2016. Since then, Beth has inspired Nate Craig to run for Mayor of Phoenixville as a Green and has assisted in organizing his campaign, and has served as the Chester County coordinator of statewide Green campaigns in 2017 and 2018. Beth has successfully connected the Chester County Greens with other Green Party locals and local activist groups. Beth has served on the GPUS National Committee as a delegate since January 2017. She has also served on the Green Party of Pennsylvania Steering Committee since November 2017, first as an at-large member and then as Secretary. In her tenure as an active Green Party member over the last two years, Beth has kept abreast of issues within the Green Party at the local, state, and national level and seeks to work collaboratively with all dedicated Greens. If elected to serve on the Apportionment Review Committee, she would strive to hear all voices and would seek to serve in a manner that would move the Green Party forward.

Hugh Esco
Hugh Esco served in a staff role for the Georgia Green Party for the calendar years 2001-2004. He worked as the executive director and political Coordinator; providing support to the party's fundraising, member, candidate and campaign development work, and providing staff support for the state committee, and staffing the party's office.

Generally since the late 1980s until the present, he has engaged in electoral and community organizing and since 1989, to organize the Georgia Green Party. He has worked in a broad array of roles on electoral campaigns for candidates for municipal, county, state assembly, state-wide, congressional and presidential campaigns. He has managed electoral campaigns; has done extensive IT work for campaigns, working with voter databases. He has organized ballot access petition drives. He has litigated ballot access barriers in state and federal courts. He has served among other roles, as a press secretary for the state party, as a state party officer, at times as a delegate or alternate to the Green National Committee, multiple terms as chair of
its bylaws committee (including during the committee’s work to recommend to the GNC, rules for the Party’s Quadrennial Presidential Nominating Convention). Esco provided monitoring and advocacy at every regular and special session of the Georgia General Assembly from 1989 until 2004 for a variety of local community organizations. He ran for public office: 1996, Georgia House District #67, as an independent; 1998 an 2002, Lieutenant Governor, as Green Party nominee; 2003, Georgia House District #8, special election, with the endorsement of Georgia Green Party.

David Gerry
David Gerry
Green-Rainbow Party (Massachusetts)
Boston, Massachusetts

I studied for a B.S. in Computer Science at UMass Boston 15 years ago. The courses I took provided me with the abilities of logic, problem solving and advanced mathematics. All of these skills will be useful for working on the Apportionment Review Committee. My participation with the Green Party has given me an understanding of Green values which will also be a major contribution when reviewing or updating the current apportionment formula.

I hope everyone will consider my qualifications when voting for members of the ARC. If elected I look forward to serving on the committee.

Jan Martell
Fellow delegates,

I am happy to accept the nomination to the Apportionment Review Committee, and hope you will support me in the election.

For those who don't know me, I have been a Green Party member since 2000, and have been a delegate or alternate to the National Committee for over 10 years. I served on the Steering Committee as GPUS Secretary for two years, and I am a former co-chair of the GPUS Platform Committee and a former co-chair of my state party, North Carolina. I have been a member of the Green Pages Editorial Board since 2006.

Over the years I have seen the apportionment process change and grow, and have seen various alternatives proposed that did not gain NC approval. So I have a familiarity with this process over time, though I have not directly participated on any of the previous apportionment committees. I look forward to having a closer look at the details, and having a conversation with my state party CC. Proportional representation is not easily resolved when ballot access rules vary so widely from state to state, so these periodic reviews are important.

Jan Martell, Alt NC

Guy Benintendi
Guy Benintendi: guyland@oneimage.com

I was born and raised in the New York City area, in a nuclear family with an older sister. After an uninspired time in high school I attended Stevens Institute of Technology where I got on track academically and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering. My first post-college job was as a test engineer for a jet engine manufacturer. The team on which I worked was responsible for the manufacture and testing of an experimental engine prototype. Engines were tested to failure, then analyzed to determine the failure’s cause. Our team collaborated with a design engineering team that redesigned the failed components, and then this iterative process continued.

After several years in this role I attended Columbia University where I graduated with an MBA with a major in finance. I then worked for a Fortune 500 corporation, first as an operations manager, and later as the strategic planning manager. The responsibilities of my 12-person strategy team were to design operational strategies that would improve customer satisfaction, revenue generation, and/or employee satisfaction. We designed strategies, and with the approval of senior management, tested them in branch offices, then analyzed the results, and made recommendations to senior management about corporate-wide implementation. Of all the work I’ve done in my career this was my all-time favorite job. It enabled me to use my creativity and analytical skills to subtly help steer a large organization in a direction I thought desirable.

While employed at this firm I attended night school and graduated with a master's degree in political science from the New School and a post-MBA certificate in Organizational Development from Baruch College.

For several years I worked as a management consultant where I was responsible for working with client companies to develop operational strategies to improve corporate effectiveness. The fatigue that a diet of frequent travel and work in an corporate environment whose values were inconsistent with my own caused me to leave the corporate world to venture out on my own. My first entrepreneurial endeavor was a New York Times delivery service in upstate New York. This was followed by a directory publishing company. In both of these companies I was solely responsible for strategic planning, marketing, and operations management. While self-employed I also worked as an adjunct faculty member at Rochester Institute of Technology teaching conflict resolution and at State University of New York teaching marketing.

In my late forties I decided on a career change and moved to Colorado to attend Naropa University where I received two masters degrees in psychology. As a Licensed Professional Counselor I worked in private practice and for a community based mental health agency. Primarily I worked with people who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.

I’m now retired and live with my wife, a Russian national, in Boulder, Colorado. We live a simple life, and enjoy occasional international travel. I stay physically fit with a vegetarian diet and a regimen of aerobic dance classes, yin yoga, and race-walking. For thirty years I’ve been an active member of the Dances of Universal Peace community. My current areas of research and study include cultural anthropology, US foreign policy, and the corporate media’s role in promoting government propaganda.

My political work has focused primarily on Palestine. I’ve visited there several times and I founded the Boulder-Nablus sister city project. My political and cultural evolution has been somewhat atypical in that I was a yuppie before I was a hippie, and I’ve moved to the left as I’ve aged, from a liberal to a leftist. I’m a member of a large and loving multi-racial and multi-ethnic family. I’ve been a registered Green Party member for many years.

Warm regards, Guy

Kristin Combs
I'm so honored to have been nominated for the Apportionment Review Committee. My strengths -- critical analysis, strategical planning, and facilitation in stressful situations -- lend themselves to the needs of the ARC. I use these skills in my work life as Executive Director of School Organization at the School District of Philadelphia, and have also applied them during my past five years in city and state Green Party leadership.

Our steering committee has implemented a new organizational structure at the state party level that streamlines our workflow, and we have tripled our annual budget. In 2015, I earned 11,000 votes as candidate for Philadelphia City Council at-Large on a $1.00 / vote budget (only 25,000 away from my win number). The next year I ran for state office, successfully securing minor party status for PA until the next election cycle.

The political structure for third parties in the United States varies so much from state to state: party registration definitions, open/closed primaries, number of partisan elections each year, ballot access requirements, etc. No two states are alike, but as a national party that is a federation of states, we need a way to compare apples to oranges. I love challenges like this. I have a proven ability to work on team to accomplish difficult goals, and plan to do the same on the ARC.

Cathi Woodward
Cathi Woodward has been an independent social justice activist for many years, finally making a declaration for the Green Party after studying various platforms in 2012. Before that she was an Independent for decades. She was in the streets for marriage equality as an initiation to activism, achieving a position as a co-leader for Marriage Equality USA - Colorado chapter and once that was achieved, continues to follow through with both racial and economic justice.

All of the values of the Greens appealed to her sense of integrity, having made her way in this world as a relational database architect. The key fundamental of integrity follows through her personal and professional life. As a data architect, one must see the big picture and construct a foundation that allows the flow of data through the various lenses to be viewed with consistent cohesion, operational, statistical, strategic perspectives all coming from the same source. She has done this successfully across various verticals from healthcare to telecom, often times programming complex formulas to discover the insights, or, gold within the data.

Additionally, Cathi is a member of the Lavender Caucus, an alternate delegate to the National Committee representing Colorado, a dues paying member of the Denver Green Party and serves as an alternate delegate to the Green Party of Colorado state council.

Mike Feinstein
Its often said that you can’t know where you are going, if you don’t know where you have been,.

I have been a Green Party member since October 1988 and have participated in multiple major Green Party structure discussions in the US since then, in California and on the national level, as well as with Green Parties internationally.

Therefore as we consider new and fresh ideas about how we are apportioned, I can offer history and perspective about why past choices were made and what were the tradeoffs involved.

For example, I participated deeply in the late 1980s/early 1990s structural discussions around the founding of the Greens/Green Party USA. In the late 1990s I served on the Transition Committee of the Association of State Green Parties, which was established to work our way from two reps per state to some form of proportionality between the states when the GPUS was formed. Years later when the GPUS established its current form of proportionality, I played a strong consultative role with the sponsors of the ultimately successful proposal from the Green Party in Illinois.

Within California, I drafted our current formula for county representation to our state party level, and served on both our 1993 and our 1999/2000 restructuring committees.

On the international level, I was a US Green delegate to the 1993 European Greens meeting in Helsinki, where they established themselves as a political party on the European level, and participate in their structural discussion and learned how they came up with their proportionality. I’ve also attended numerous international Green Party meetings around the world, and have discussed with dozens of national Green Parties how they organize themselves.

Finally I have great experience in drafting bylaws on a state and national level, and know our GPUS bylaws well, so I can help ensure that whatever is proposed is congruent with how the rest of the bylaws are written - or suggest where else they may need to be changed to effectuate new ideas.

In a nine member committee, having someone of my background and experience would be extremely valuable in the mix of perspectives that would make up an effective committee.

Therefore I ask for high ranking, and in return you will get my high level of commitment and work.

Thanks

Mike Feinstein
Santa Monica, CA

PS - Outside of my Green Party work, I served for eight years on the Santa Monica City Council, and two years as Mayor. My successful experience in government also demonstrates that I can work well within a larger structure.

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