Posted by David Blau to LP State Chairs:
I am writing in my capacity as Secretary of the Libertarian National Committee to inform you of the affiliate delegate allocations for the 2014 Libertarian National Convention, which will be held from June 26 to June 29, 2014 in Columbus, Ohio.
Delegates are allocated to the National Convention according to Article 11 of the national bylaws. The number of delegates is based on a two-part formula that is set forth in Article 11, section 4 of those bylaws.
I have attached a spreadsheet indicating the counts of the delegates based on this formula. If anyone is unable to read the contents of the spreadsheet, please send an email to [email protected] and I will mail you your state’s numbers directly.
Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions about the delegate allocations or the National Convention. I look forward to seeing you all in Columbus!
Yours in Liberty,
Dave
That would advantage smaller population states, since they get two electoral votes per senator same as the big states.
There are many things that could be proposed; they stand a better chance of being seriously considered if they get emailed to Chuck.
Not necessarily. Their delegate allocation per national member is proportional to how many national members each state has and the variation based on how well their presidential ticket did is obviously in part a function of how many voters each state has. So how does this benefit larger states? Unless you mean that smaller states should have the same vote as larger states despite having fewer members and fewer voters?
Correct.
I think it was supposed to be an incentive for state parties to go out and work harder to get more votes in their states for the national ticket.
I’m not sure how well that really works, but I think that is the theory.
The LNC pays for relatively little ballot access other than presidential. Most of the time states are on their own when it comes to state and local ballot access that does not directly get the presidential ticket on the ballot (although in some but not all cases they can piggyback off the presidential race to get some other candidates on). There are some exceptions, but they are exceptions, not the rule.
One might propose, e.g., two delegates per electoral vote, perhaps plus any elected Libertarian Federal office-holder gets a seat ex officio One might also propose that the American Associated Commonwealths and overseas Libertarians should get some seats.
Matt I agree. From the way I interrupt what is written the bigger states have a better starting position. That doesn’t seem to be fair to me but maybe I am reading it wrong.
The LNC doesn’t provide a lot of ballot access help for races other than POTUS, as I understand it.
Frankly, I don’t think that POTUS votes should have anything to do with Delegate allocation. Why was this done in the first place?
Yeah but when the LNC pays for most of it using funds from everyone, doesn’t that somewhat level the playing field?
Some states have a much harder time getting into state and/or local races. For example, in Alabama we need over 40k valid sgnatures to get into a statewide race and 20% of the statewide vote for retention. And next door in Georgia, while they have statewide ballot access, local races are very difficult to get access for.
Excellent points Bruce
You may want to bring that up with Chuck and the Bylaws committee.
Note that the delegate allocation depends heavily on the LP presidential vote in each state, ignoring state wide and local candidates. The formula could be reconstituted to include subsequent vote years statewide or local candidates. For example averaging the presidential vote percentage, the highest statewide race, and the highest local race. Virginia just had a candidate get 7% in 2013 and DC 6% in 2012. But their delegate count is based on Gary Johnson’s vote only.
Ah…so I was wrong. It happens….
my dads fam is from VA , my moms from socal then las vegas
Not far off.
I believe the delegate count for CA is similar to what’s it been the last couple conventions.
That’s a very recent development.. they had a recruitment campaign to sign up national members and now have over a thousand; California is the only other state to have over a thousand national members anymore.
Huh, I thought your family was in Vegas for generations.
I’m thinking DC burbs if we can find decent prices.
Ohio is bigger than Texas?? that should give them confidence for a clean sweep next convention…w/o those pesky Texans fucking up the plan again………..:) Confidence can be misleading as we all know…….
what part of VA would we be considering? My family is from there
Yes, that’s part of the idea.
VA, immediately adjacent to DC, might bring a bit of the press out.
I agree.
paulie
I appreciate the forwards. The fact that issues like this still exist nearly 2 years after the national judicial committee heard this issue is really disappointing.
I think there’s a pretty nice files collection there now 🙂
As Paulie notes, my state chair and other sources have forwarded to me the LSLA and LNC-Discuss Digest discussions which I am happy to forward. The LNC file is up on the Starchild reflector list, the LNC-Discuss yahoogroup.
Wes – I’ll try to remember to forward you anything important on the LSLA list. Phillies has the December file now, he can send it to you if he hasn’t already.
It’s hard to predict how different state parties will be doing 6 years from now but I think VA should be considered…however, I’m more interested in the Crystal City area that Marc Montoni mentioned. If there are hotels that have adequate space and reasonable deals on rooms I would be interested in more details. We haven’t been in the Boswash corridor since 1998 and it would save staff travel costs as well as be close to a huge population corridor and make it easy for many news organizations to cover us and many issue organizations HQed in the DC area that may be marginally interested in being vendors to be there.
11% of the votes cast for Johnson nationwide, not 11% of all votes for all candidates in California.
It’s about right since that is about the percentage of the national population that lives in CA.
Is the CA percentage right? Seems like 11% is high for the LP ticket. I do not know if that affects the numbers.
Another thought for libertarians: 2020 convention in Richmond VA? Assuming Sarvis runs again for either US Senate or Governor might eb good for libertarians to have their convention in a growing state: Virginia.
Mark
As you are quite aware, I was removed from the LSLA list preemptively as part of the LNC-Officer assisted (and partially led) attempted coup in this state in 2011. I have yet to be returned to the list.
On multiple occasions I have made both staff, officers, and all the state chairs aware that I am not on the list run by the LSLA. In the past I have missed important communications because of reliance on this list. I contacted staff about those issues, and I believe they have mostly corrected the issue and get things to me (but I can’t be entirely sure). The LNC has turned a blind eye to these issues … just like most issues that require leadership that is not entirely feckless.
Just checking on now–Happy New Year all.
Wes–I have been a state chair for four years and received Dave Blau’s email the same as most (but not all) others: on the LSLA list. Oregon has 15 delegate spots.
Kevin and all of LPOhio–Congratulations! Having passed New York in 2012, Ohio now has leaped over Texas and Florida as well.
Wes I did that a couple of years ago but don’t feel like running the numbers again since I am working on other things right now. However New Hampshire was # 1 at that time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population
Michael
Divide their membership numbers by us house representatives and you will be close.
Perhaps there haven’t been answers to all the questions being asked because it’s been a holiday season.
Be nice to see the per capita numbers by state.
I think Kevin was using that to predict that turnout would be good. But Texas was usually ahead of Ohio, which I believe was #4 or 5 until recently. They had a big LP national membership recruitment drive recently by the state party.
Paul said: “Texas is behind Ohio. 8 of the top 10 (other than CA and TX) are all east of the Mississippi, according to a followup email by Kevin Knedler.”
This should not be a big surprise since there are more high population states that are east of the Mississippi River than are west of the Mississippi River.
The numbers are pretty ineresting too. Ohio is now the second largest party by national LP membership and number of delegates, behind only California. Texas is behind Ohio. 8 of the top 10 (other than CA and TX) are all east of the Mississippi, according to a followup email by Kevin Knedler.
Paulie,
Thanks for the complete forward.
Correct.
This does not appear to be the State Chairs Contact List that LNC Employee Casey Hansen runs. It appears to be the old LSLA list.
I am on the list; I send it to IPR. No one posted it, so I went ahead and did it myself. I received the original from Davd Blau via mailing list: statechairs.hq.lp.org
With the header:
from: Dave Blau
reply-to: [email protected]
to: LP-State Chairs
date: Mon, Dec 30, 2013 at 11:07 PM
subject: [Statechairs] Delegate allocations to the Libertarian National Convention
mailing list: statechairs.hq.lp.org
State Chairs:
I am writing in my capacity as Secretary of the Libertarian National Committee to inform you of the affiliate delegate allocations for the 2014 Libertarian National Convention, which will be held from June 26 to June 29, 2014 in Columbus, Ohio.
Delegates are allocated to the National Convention according to Article 11 of the national bylaws. The number of delegates is based on a two-part formula that is set forth in Article 11, section 4 of those bylaws.
I have attached a spreadsheet indicating the counts of the delegates based on this formula. If anyone is unable to read the contents of the spreadsheet, please send an email to [email protected] and I will mail you your state’s numbers directly.
Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you have any questions about the delegate allocations or the National Convention. I look forward to seeing you all in Columbus!
Yours in Liberty,
Dave
Does someone have the actual email? Including the actual header would for once be useful.
So far as I can determine, the LNC does not have a mailing list of state chairs, assembled as a usable mailing list. It does have a list of state chairs, not necessarily always up to date. It uses another organization’s list fo state chairs a list that is known to be false.
What did IPR actually see as a basis for this article? From whom was the original of this posting received?
I infer that “posted to LP State Chairs” actually means “sent as an email to” “name”@”someplace.type”.
Perhaps someone can tell us where the mailing was actually sent, as a unitary email address, and where the named “LP State Chairs” address actually sends email.
He was sent the email. I have been pointing out for years that I am not on the LSLA list and the LNC has done nothing about it and continues to rely on it as a distribution medium.
“I used the LSLA list” will not be accepted as an excuse.
I could be wrong, but I’m going to guess that Dave just was not thinking of Oregon when he sent that out and that the sleight was unintentional. I take it you actually sent him the email as well, and are not just assuming he will see it on IPR.
Mr. Secretary,
I recently learned on IPR that delegate allocations have been calculated.
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2014/01/delegate-allocation-by-state-to-the-2014-libertarian-national-convention/
What is disconcerting is that I appear to have not been sent this email, but it appears to be written to state chairs and addressed as such.
As you may or may not be aware, in 2012 the Oregon party was never provided a database login to register our delegation. When we requested one, protocol was broken for our state and we were sent a spreadsheet to fill out instead (a breach of protocol done intentionally in order to ensure that there would be a delegate contest for which the votes on the committee were already stacked)
We are now arriving at 2014 and already I see our state is receiving different treatment.
Our board has been in the process of negotiating a resolution to ask the LNC to answer questions about the structural nature of the organization we appear to be in a hostile relationship with.
Whereas the side you represent was the initiator of aggression and has thus far been unapologetic – the reality of the situation that occurred from our perspective is that the LNC has much more culpability, direct action, and coordination from officers of the LNC in both creating the crisis in our state and then attempting to utilize it to effect a coup up to and including funding the Oregon Republican Party party’s staff lawyer — who then started a lawsuit that has cost us over $200k in donors’ support.
Since we have the advantage of legal discovery we are aware of facts your current leadership is not, but since you are structured as a corporate entity, you are responsible for the actions of your organization regardless of internal elections of new leadership and we still continue to hold you accountable for the damages you have caused.
This additional slight will be raised to the attention of our board, but I also question the nature of how it occurred and what are your motives and would like to understand why a process of disenfranchisement of the Libertarian Party of Oregon is beginning anew.
I await a prompt answer that does not involve reliance on the LSLA mailing list which I have advised you and your staff numerous times is incomplete.
—
Wes Wagner
Chairperson, Libertarian Party of Oregon