[Lnc-business] Compiling agenda for July 17 meeting

[Alicia Mattson]

Regarding filling the at-large vacancy, you may recall that even in the
post-convention LNC meeting I disagreed that we were somehow obligated to
seat the next three for the vacancies.  We were in a rush, and I was tired,
so I didn't elaborate much, but I will now.

The authorship team of Robert's Rules doesn't have a stake in our internal
politics.  They study organizational design and write rules for what things
they have found to be optimal for governance of a generic organization.
Robert's has strong cautions against plurality elections.  Spanning pages
404-405 you will find:

"A plurality vote is the largest number of votes to be given any candidate
or proposition when three or more choices are [page 405] possible; the
candidate or proposition receiving the largest number of votes has a
plurality. A plurality that is not a majority never chooses a proposition
or elects anyone to office except by virtue of a special rule previously
adopted. If such a rule is to apply to the election of officers, it must be
prescribed in the bylaws. A rule that a plurality shall elect is unlikely
to be in the best interests of the average organization."

If the LNC members use plurality-ranking logic to decide who to vote for,
the same caution would apply.  The most recommended option in RONR is
multiple rounds of voting until someone receives a majority.  Multiple
rounds of voting allow delegates to adjust due to changing circumstances,
particularly when there is such a large field of candidates.

In real life, I have seen many, many situations in which the two
next-ranking-shy-of-majority candidates were either tied or very close to
each other, but when a direct runoff was held between those two, a VERY
clear preference was found for one of the candidates over the other.

The at-large results have a tight field in the next-ranked list.  I don't
find that 30-ish% of the 418 ballots cast from a pool of 1018 delegates
seated at some point should be equated with having received a majority
vote.  Had a runoff been possible, it might very well have given us a
different ranking.

Seat-the-next-ranked wasn't the philosophy used by the LNC (some of those
members are on again this term) to fill the LNC Secretary vacancy when Ruth
Bennett resigned in early 2013.  (See the email ballots documented in the
Secretary's report in the March 2013 minutes.)  It wasn't the approach used
by the Judicial Committee this year, either.

If LNC members feel the next-ranking also happens to be the one they think
is best suited for the job, they can vote for that person.  A convention
runoff might have gotten that person to a majority, or it might not have.

If I'm not mistaken, when our Chair first ran for the position in 2014, one
of the campaign talking points under the banner of transparency was that no
vacancies would be filled without advertising the position to solicit
applicants.  That recollection is the reason for my message saying I
assumed that would be the process here.

-Alicia








On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 5:40 AM, Sam Goldstein <goldsteinatlarge at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Thanks, Alicia.  I know the Chair is planning to place the At Large
> opening on the agenda for the next LNC meeting.  Since I will be
> unable to attend, I'd prefer to address this matter in an e-mail ballot
> following discussion and nominations.
>
> Our precedent is to look to the At Large voting at the convention and to
> take the delegate's stated preferences to heart when filling
> vacancies of this nature.
>
> Live Free,
>
>
>
> Sam Goldstein
> Libertarian National Committee
> Member at Large
> 8925 N Meridian St, Ste 101
> Indianapolis IN 46260
> 317-850-0726 Phone
> 317-582-1773 Fax
>
> On Sun, Jul 3, 2016 at 4:23 AM, Alicia Mattson <agmattson at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Will we be publishing something to advertise the vacancy and invite
>> applicants?
>>
>> -Alicia
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Jul 1, 2016 at 7:49 AM, Nicholas Sarwark <chair at lp.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear All,
>>>
>>> I'm putting together a proposed agenda for the July 17 meeting in Las
>>> Vegas.  I am already planning to include time for discussion of
>>> filling the At-Large vacancy created by Dr. Feldman's death,
>>> population of the Audit Committee, and discussion of creating a
>>> national reregistration week (at the request of Mr. Somes).
>>>
>>> If you have other items that you would like to add to the proposed
>>> agenda, please email me with a description and the amount of time you
>>> would like on the agenda.  As a reminder, we will only be having a
>>> one-day meeting in Las Vegas, so we will need to be efficient with our
>>> time.  To that end, we will have a working lunch brought in so as to
>>> avoid losing committee members for that time.
>>>
>>> Yours in liberty,
>>> Nick
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
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