Let me begin by explaining that I am not in Chicago, so I can’t report news personally. What I can do is provide links to others who are blogging from Chicago. Look under the fold for details.
These are from The Wilder Side by New York Greens Kimberly and Ian Wilder:
cynthia celebrates her family
cynthia speaks
rosa clemente wraps up…
what can hip-hop do?
rosa speaks…
rosa clemente speaks
This one is from Greens for Greens.
Lou Novak of Detroit Greens blog is twittering from the Convention here.
C-SPAN has set this page up for videos, but none are up yet.
Polidoc Productions is filming as well, but their videos may take even longer to appear.
And of course, as events unfold, these may also be worth a look.
Green Party National Party Website
All Things Cynthia McKinney
Run Cynthia Run
Sean…thanks. It’s all smoke and mirrors though. 🙂
You may not be at their convention but you’re putting a hell of a lot more news about it on this site than the other one. Good work guys!
No question in my mind, you are right. Every delegate was accounted for in the sense that all were either there in the flesh, represented by someone who was there in the flesh, or simply absent and unable to be represented at all because each delegate was limited to one proxy vote.
I was not involved in writing these rules up, nor did I observe the committee that did, but again, I do agree that this is a problem, one we Greens would do well to address soon. Having to borrow money to pull it off is another sign that we have internal issues to address.
It is my hope that the GP will stop holding a national meeting every year and go to every other year or even every four years, with either the steering committee or Green National Committee, both smaller than the nominating convention numbers, meeting in person yearly.
Another idea would be simultaneous state conventions hooked up via the Internet, or five or six regional conventions hooked up via the Internet.
Both would save money, which has been an issue for many Greens.
Gregg, yes, that helps. But it doesn’t change my observation that it is a seriously flawed system. e.g. could you imagine a similar discrepancy in the dem or rep convention? EVERY delegate is accounted for.
I’ll try Robert, but I may have some facts wrong. Again, not being there myself makes all my “reporting” suspect, or should.
I believe what happened is the Green National Committee set a number for delegates to the convention, then used the Delegate Apportionment Committee to take that raw number and break it down to a state by state total. the total was apparently 837, and each state had a minimum of four delegates.
Not every state was able to send a full delegation. Those states had the option of sending half their delegation, with each delegate able to cast one proxy vote. I gather that there was a debate about how that would work…is she casting a proxy for this person, that person, or for the state as a whole?, with the outcome apparently being that each state would decide who they were voting for.
I am guessing that there were only 532 votes cast because there were fewer than that number of delegates. They were saying to expect 1000 folks at the convention. I don’t know how many actually showed up.
Hope that helps.
Gregg, can you explain to me what happened to about 300 delegate votes? Did about 837 delegates attend convention? Only 532 cast a first ballot vote? 313 for McKinney putting her over 50% + 1. Please explain.