Green Party of the United States - National Committee Voting

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Proposal Details

Proposal ID	158
Proposal	Restoration of Proxy Voting at National Meetings
Presenter	Idaho Green Party, Green Party of Florida
Floor Manager	Marc Sanson
Phase	Closed - Adopted
Discussion	07-04-2005 - 07-10-2005
Voting	07-11-2005 - 07-17-2005
Presens Quorum	Two Thirds of Active Accredited States/Caucuses
Consens Quorum	Two Thirds of Yes and No Votes

Background

Prior to the 2004 general election, a clause existed in the official bylaws which stated:

“No delegate to the Coordinating Committee may cast more than two of that state's votes.”

This clause allowed for state parties to use 2:1 proxy voting at the Green Party’s annual national meetings. Because the bylaw allowing proxy votes was allowed to lapse in 2004, proxy voting will not be permitted as of the 2005 national conference.

While we recognize the value of having a maximum number of delegates attend the convention, we also recognize that:

· It is not possible for all state parties to finance the full cost of having their delegation attend the convention.
· The cost of attending the convention is too high for many delegates to finance on their own, or scheduling time away from their responsibilities is too great a burden.
· Every state party should be allowed to cast their full number of allocated votes at the convention, regardless of whether or not they have the resources to send all delegates there. For a state party to commit to sending at least half their allocated delegates should not be an undue burden.
· Denial of maximum possible voting representation for state parties skews our democratic voting process.
· The ecological cost of cross-country travel is high, especially in regards to CO2 and NOx emissions caused by air travel, and the Green Party should be supportive of delegates’ desires to minimize this pollution.

Therefore, we propose that the GPUS bylaws be amended to allow delegates in attendance at the national meeting to exercise one extra vote each for those who cannot attend, as was always done previously.

Proposal

The following language shall be inserted into Article II, section 2 of the official bylaws of the Green Party of the United States:

“A delegate to the National Committee may cast an additional vote at a National Conference in place of an absent delegate, as long as the total number of votes cast for that state does not exceed its total allowed votes on the National Committee, or twice the number of voting delegates in attendance."

Resources

Contact: Matthew Denney, humanrights05@hotmail.com, Gary Hecker, hecker@ecoisp.com, Julia Aires, julia.aires@verizon.net

References

http://www.gp.org/documents/bylaws.shtml, current official bylaws of the Green Party of the United States.

The voting software used by the Green Party of the United States is free software, licensed under the General Public License v2 (GPL).