The Judicial Committee decided, in a 4 to 3 vote, that the action of the Libertarian National Committee and its Executive Committee was void, as it violated the Libertarian Party Bylaws.
Voting in the Majority: Gray, Hall, Sarwark and Wrights
Dissenting: Latham, Holtz and Sullentrup
The text of the decision and dissents is here.
@106 Paulie
Precisely my point. The reconnect has yet to happen. Perhaps I should have phrased it differently?
However, it has been only two business days, and there was a hurricane in between, so perhaps matters will be fixed on 8/30.
I see nothing listed for website at that address, State officers are not listed either; elected members and campus orgs are listed.
If you consult the national party web site LP.ORG
you will find http://www.lp.org/states/Oregon that the LP Oregon web site is to be reconnected.
103 gp: Of course, sometimes people are so sure they are right that they assume that everyone else will automatically agree with them.
me: There may well be such people. I’d strongly suggest they are not paying attention, if so.
In L circles, this is especially so!
I do think that most fair-minded folk would agree that having 2 LPOs is dysfunctional. Most would also think that the LPO bylaws had a bar that is also dysfunctional. Reasonable people would also agree that solving the problem is no easy matter. The idea that one group can sustain a disaffiliation by the LNC by simply refusing to sign off on with the SoS that they are not now the LPO leadership (if it comes to that) is abusive, if only because I’d think they’d have a hard time justifying the situation were it reversed, ie, if Reeves were to do it.
Further, the idea that the default position that a state LP’s officers are the ones who the SoS recognizes is reasonable. It’s also reasonable to question whether there are mitigating circumstances under which the deeper truth (no quorum) trumps the rubber-stamp by the SoS. It’s surely reasonable to question why the EC didn’t wait until the full LNC, particularly given that no rationale has been shared with the wider community.
Being unreasonable can be justified, but rarely so. IMO, this ain’t such a circumstance. I see no upside to being unreasonable in this case….
Tom,
I don’t see where we disagree. It is Sunday evening, and perhaps I am missing the obvious.
I had not thought of the parallelism with the Wrights Affair, but I once you explained it I agree that the parallelism is there.
Your statement that someone (I am not picky on exactly who) did not believe that everything would sail smoothly ahead has several alternatives
1) Someone believed that matters were likely to run up on the rocks, and went ahead anyhow, either because (i) the situation is desperate; charge! (ii) there is no real risk, (iii) we want matters to go up on the rocks to get to our actual obstacle
2) There was no real consideration of what would happen after the first domino was shoved over, and therefore there was no belief at all about what would happen next.
Of course, sometimes people are so sure they are right that they assume that everyone else will automatically agree with them.
And some groups are so used to winning that they never worry about defeat. Victory fever is the name.
One might consider that the Libertarian Party affiliate in Oregon, the Libertarian Party of Oregon, is going to be a tad annoyed, and may be planning defensive actions.
George @ 99,
You write:
“In my opinion, the Executive Committee did not recognize adequately clearly the possibility that the Libertarian Party of Oregon would appeal the ExComm action to the Judicial Committee.”
I’ll lay out my logic for believing otherwise, although some may find evaluations within that logic tendentious:
In the “Wrights Affair,” the Starr/Carling/Mattson faction attempted to get the result they wanted (removal of an LNC member) by having an official (LNC Secretary Bob Sullentrup) issue an edict, having another official (then-chair Bill Redpath) affirm that edict, and claiming that since the act had been done by administrative edict instead of by following the bylaws, the Judicial Committee didn’t have jurisdiction. They lost.
This time around the same faction did pretty much the same thing.
This time the goal was removing a state affiliate’s officers through constructive disaffiliation, the bureaucrat was Carling himself, and the bureaucrat’s edict was affirmed by a small group (the executive committee) rather than simply by the chair, but while some of the particulars were slightly different, none were dramatically different.
While it’s just barely reasonable to believe that they might have expected the Judicial Committee to rule in their favor, they’d have to be pretty fucking stupid to think that there would be no appeal, and at least slightly stupid to think that the whole “you don’t have jurisdiction because we want very badly for you to not have jurisdiction” thing would work any better last time than it did this time.
I do not believe that Starr, Carling or Mattson are stupid. Therefore I don’t believe that they believed that their project would just sail smoothly from conception to completion.
I dunno. Maybe they’re smart individually but getting them together produces some kind of bizarre Wonder Triplet Stupidity Field?
RC
Ummh, I conclude that it was missed because it was not discussed at the LNC meeting, or so attendees assure me.
100 gp, why do you conclude that? It seems like a major oversight, if true, since the LNC meeting was a month away…
In my opinion, the Executive Committee did not recognize adequately clearly the possibility that the Libertarian Party of Oregon would appeal the ExComm action to the Judicial Committee.
The notion that the Oregon issue should have been brought to the last LNC meeting seems to have been missed.
We are up to nine and counting possible next steps for the ExComm majority and its friends.
re Mr. Capozzi at 95. Thank you. Very well said and something many should pay attention to.
96 tk:When you know that course X will drag a matter out and you take course X anyway, it’s difficult to believe subsequent pleas of urgency.
me: A manifestation of how the “little lies” only snowball the situation. Better to grow a pair!
Aaron @ 93,
Sorry if I got the numbers wrong — it’s been awhile since I’ve had occasion to read the LNC’s bylaws.
However, my point stands: If the LNC fails to head off credentialing issues, they’re addressed by the convention. Presumably most delegates would prefer that that such issues never make it that far, though.
And, once again:
The matter of LPO could have been expeditiously resolved by a motion to disaffiliate, either at this last meeting, or if the rules allow for it by mail ballot.
Instead, the executive committee took action that it had to know would almost certainly be appealed to, and would quite possibly be reversed by, the Judicial Committee, dragging the matter out. When you know that course X will drag a matter out and you take course X anyway, it’s difficult to believe subsequent pleas of urgency.
94 as, yes, the ECers are reasonable. And, yes, there may well be “legal reasons” to not share the rationale for this move. This move failed, though. It may well have been the optimal move, all things considered. Still, it did fail. It may have been poor legal strategy. It may be the JC’s majority interpretation is incorrect.
In my experience in the corporate world, I was close enough to the top that I knew not only what was being done, but WHY it was being done. I participated in developing the “cover story.” I often felt that such maneuvering may seem like a good idea at the time, but it very often backfires. Developing an esprit de corps from top to bottom requires treating others as adults, not pawns in a game. When slickness becomes a way of being, the in-crowd at the top start telling themselves little lies to rationalize their behavior. After a while, they can’t discern between truth and fabrication, as they construct their own alternative reality. More importantly, all this gamesmanship detracts from the goal, as energy is spent in gaming out the fabrication for public consumption. When the fabrications become non-credible, leaders fall back on fiduciary reasons for non-disclosure.
Is the LPO situation like my corporate experience? Dunno. It does feel like it, though…
Maximize candor; minimize guile.
RC @92
The EC is populated with mostly reasonable people, including current chair Hinkle and two former national chairs, Redpath and Lark.
One of the agenda items scheduled for that Executive Committee call was a discussion with legal counsel on the subject of LPO.
We may want to consider the reasonable possibility that there were legal reasons why the EC felt a need to act quickly. If there were, one could understand why they haven’t announced such reasoning to the world.
Also, recall that according to their brief submitted to the JC, thirteen members of the LNC requested that Chairman Hinkle call a meeting of the EC to deal with the matter and fourteen signed the brief.
Tom @91,
Actually, credentialing disputes on the convention floor are settled with a majority vote of the other delegates.
The 7/8 vote is only required when a state affiliate does not submit the names in advance.
I hope no one will argue that we now need a disaffiliation vote of the convention to disaffiliate those states that send competing slates of delegates to a convention.
91 tk: Instead, the Executive Committee exceeded its authority, and instead of straightening the hell up, flying right, and putting the matter before the full LNC as soon as an appeal was filed with the Judicial Committee, dragged its feet until that appeal was resolved, which didn’t happen until after the LNC meeting.
me: Yes, I’ve still not seen a good explanation of why ExCom jumped the gun like this. Was it thoughtless, or some sort of “clever” (sneaky?) evasive tactic? Something else?
Neutralizing bad karma with more bad karma is contra-indicated, as a general rule.
Ideally, things that might affect credentialing get taken of well in advance of the national convention.
If they don’t, well, then the convention itself handle those things.
If a delegation shows up looking for seating, it takes a 7/8ths vote of the already seated delegates to seat them. Presumably no delegation whose composition was especially controversial would be able to make it over that bar, so unless it’s the first delegation to show up, it won’t be seated.
But one of the arguments I’m seeing, or at least inferring here — that the executive committee had to act as it did in order to head off national convention credentialing problems — is ass-backwards.
The LNC could have dealt with the Oregon matter by following the bylaws vis a vis disaffiliation at this most recent meeting.
Instead, the Executive Committee exceeded its authority, and instead of straightening the hell up, flying right, and putting the matter before the full LNC as soon as an appeal was filed with the Judicial Committee, dragged its feet until that appeal was resolved, which didn’t happen until after the LNC meeting.
So basically, the Executive Committee petulantly wasted an entire LNC meeting cycle with respect to “the Oregon problem.”
@ 89
Credentialing? Is there someplace that credentialing arises other than the National Convention?
Absolutely.
At every LNC meeting we credential that those who are present are the legitimate holders of their positions.
So, if two people showed up claiming to be the legitimate regional representative of the region, the rest of the LNC would have to decide by a majority vote who is to be seated.
You certainly wouldn’t resolve that conflict by disaffiliating every state affiliate in that region.
86
You are right. The LNC might need to reschedule its next meeting to do a face-to-face disaffiliation vote.
@87 Credentialing? Is there someplace that credentialing arises other than the National Convention?
@86
Is the next LNC meeting less than 6 months before the next national convention?
Yes.
The next LNC meeting is December 10-11. The convention takes place the weekend of May 5-6, 2012.
Paulie @82
The mistake I believe some people are making here is equating credentialing with affiliation.
80 (c) “Wait for the next LNC meeting. Are there 14 votes?”
Is the next LNC meeting less than 6 months before the next national convention?
81 tk, I’m just trying to get my head around this procedural morass. I don’t know who the LPO is now, and near as I can tell, no one REALLY does. Wagner is “recognized” by the State as Chair.
Just tryin’ to imagine how this might go. Say the LNC disaffiliates the Wagner-led entity and affiliates with the Reeves-led entity. The Wagner-led entity (apparently a charming, civil crew) sends another flaming middle finger, and remains the State-sanctioned LPO, I’m guessing. There might be a non-recognized “LP” for this cycle in OR, with their only role being to send delegates to Nat Con in 2012.
Wagner’s LPO might field candidates that might get on the ballot. (I do wonder if they can and would nominate say Wrights should he get the nomination from the national convention. This again shows why I questioned whether Wrights was conflicted in this matter.)
GP’s offered other options, which might happen, too.
How any of these advance liberty…dunno. Theories most welcome…
@81 It would perhaps help if ‘political party named “Libertarian” ‘ stayed distinct from other terms.
In Massachusetts, the legal names of political parties do not include the word “party”, a ‘political party’ is what the rest of the world calls a ‘major party’, and the local Libertarian Party affiliate does not include “Party” in its name.
OF course, if the some of the LNC officers sue the Judicial Committee in Federal Court, as one of them who will not be living this down as the next convention approaches proposed, it would be the duty of the LNC to fund the Judicial Committee’s defense.
In the scenario you describe, it should, and I believe would, be easy. If not, those voting against disaffiliation should, and I believe would, fail to be elected to the next term.
You would, as the state recognized entity. But again, I think that under the scenario you lay out, which is more egregious and clear cut than the Oregon case for the reasons I mentioned, it would not come to that.
Bob @ 79,
Which part of “whether or not the LPO is the LNC’s affiliate in Oregon has nothing to do with whether or not the LPO is the LPO” do you continue to not understand.
One more time:
The LNC, through its affiliation and disaffiliation powers, controls which, if any, organization is its affiliate in any particular state.
The LNC does NOT control which, if any, organization is the Libertarian Party of any particular state.
The Party, its members, imposed the 3/4 vote rule on disaffiliations in order to suppress political irregularity of various sorts. The 3/4 requirement is on disaffiliation, not affiliation.
Similarly, the membership through its National Convention in establishing the Bylaws set down that there would be a Judicial Committee elected by the National Convention.
If the whiners on the LNC do not like the outcome, they have at least nine alternatives
(0) Just keep whining.
(a) Give it up. Tell the Reeves people to re-register Libertarian (this will inconvenience the Republican Town Committeeman) and advance the party from within.
(b) Go for a mail ballot to disaffiliate Wagner et al. Are there 14 votes?
(c) Wait for the next LNC meeting. Are there 14 votes?
(d) Litigate as the LNC. Litigating against your own affiliate for using the party name is going to raise a few eyebrows.
(d 1/2) Sue the Judicial Committee, as one officer has already discussed. The discussion was a private member suit.
(e) Call a Special National Convention.
(f) Resign your memberships and start a new party.
(g) RESIGN IN PROTEST! Seriatim, electing new officers and At-Larges as you go.
It will be “interesting” (in not such a good way) if the LNC follows the JC’s procedural edict, disaffiliates the Wagner-led LPO with a full vote, and then Wagner refuses to sign off on the ruling with the SOS.
What happens then?
Aaron,
As you point out @ 73, the LNC does not disaffiliate officers, it disaffiliates affiliates.
In your hypothetical situation, why should the LNC “recognize” or “not recognize” officers, instead of affiliates?
Yes, there are situations where the LNC’s inability to determine which organization is the legitimate affiliate may be problematic (the main one you cite is the selection or removal of regional LNC representatives).
The possibility that a difficult situation may arise does not magically create a new power for the executive committee. The LNC’s recourse in case of inability to distinguish which organization is the legitimate affiliate is to disaffiliate and then go through a re-affiliation process that allows for such a distinction to be made.
@75
It’s difficult to get 14 people to agree on anything.
I repeat. If you don’t have 14 people to recognize someone, who gets recognized?
paulie // Aug 27, 2011:
“As I understand it, LPO has sold life membership to people regardless of whether or not they are registered to vote as Libertarians ………..”
[Lake: In California, I was owed money by the local LP. Their first solution was to have me pony up more bucks for (as a non Lib) Libertarian membership. Even B4 I yelled “No!” I replied, ‘You guys on commission or some thing ??????’ When I did get my money back, in a public place, at a party in the home of a FORMER Lib …… I counted out the cash! The LP official, whom has been in and out of court continuously, ask ‘Don’t you trust me ???????’ After I said “No” he offered to smooth things over by shaking my hand. I informed him that, if so, I would be counting my fingers after wards. The house reverberated with laughter ——— and from a highly Lib audiance.]
The problem is that one does not disaffiliate “officers”. One disaffiliates “affiliates”.
So disaffiliate the affiliate. Then affiliate the new affiliate (the one elected at the convention).
In other words, if you don’t have 14 people to recognize someone, who gets recognized?
If 14 LNC members could not be found to vote to disaffiliate under the scenario you present that is a serious problem with that LNC. Hopefully, and probably, that problem would be remedied at the next convention; at the post-convention meeting the new LNC would disaffiliate California, then immediately vote to reaffiliate a new state affiliate led by the group elected at the convention.
I would think that 14 votes would be found, though.
In other words, if you don’t have 14 people to recognize someone, who gets recognized?
@69
Paulie,
The problem is that one does not disaffiliate “officers”. One disaffiliates “affiliates”.
You can’t equate the officers with the organization. Officers hold a temporary position of trust.
To view this as a disaffiliation sets up a likely scenario where five people on the LNC could prevent the other 13 from recognizing the legitimate officers.
Not sure when the next meeting is, but that may not be an option. Aaron pointed out that a disaffiliation vote is not allowed in the six months right before a national convention.
How did we get here?
It is possible that the people driving the EC action (a) wanted to get it over and done with, (b) did not anticipate Wes would appeal, or assumed they could claim successfully his appeal was invalid, and/or (c) did not anticipate they would lose the appeal, because otherwise they could have gone to the LNC meeting.
If the motive was (a), and favorable outcomes for (b) and (c) were anticipated, well, it would have advanced the time cycle a bit. But it did not.
There are now several clear alternatives for the Reeves supporters on the LNC:
(a) Give it up. Tell the Reeves people to re-register Libertarian (this will inconvenience the Republican Town Committeeman) and advance the party from within.
(b) Go for a mail ballot to disaffiliate Wagner et al. Are there 14 votes?
(c) Wait for the next LNC meeting. Are there 14 votes?
(d) Litigate. Litigating against your own affiliate for using the party name is going to raise a few eyebrows.
(e) Call a Special National Convention.
and, of course,
(f) RESIGN IN PROTEST! Seriatim, electing new officers and At-Larges as you go.
Bet you never thought of that last one.
We have some imaginative kibitzers here.
AS an amusing aside, at the last meeting the LNC recognized a Rhode Island Affiliate. Did anyone catch a disaffiliation vote for the previous affiliate, which made its appearance at the organizational meeting of the current people prior to their last elections?
The legitimate officers. I said that twice earlier.
I never suggested that both should be recognized.
Disaffiliating you would be the correct thing to do under that scenario, as I said before.
I thought Wagner said they had quorum problems and that was the reason he said his group changed them?
@63
Let me restate my question:
Who should the LNC recognize as the Chair? Me or the legitimate officers?
You can’t recognize both because you are only allowed one state-wide affiliate per state.
If you say that the LNC should recognize me, than they have disaffiliated the real LPC without a vote of the LNC.
If you say that the LNC should recognize the legitimate officers, some are arguing that the LNC disaffiliated me.
What is the right answer?
re Paulie @ 58. I read the Oregon by-laws shortly after this event happened at someone’s request. I don’t think they had a quorum problems. It is just that a couple of people from out of state insisted that they did. These two from out of state claimed to be parliamentarians, but if you read RRONR Their argument didn’t hold water. I think I posted some details on that month ago here.
Aaron writes; “4. Due to its size, California is entitled to send an LNC regional representative to the LNC, which under the old bylaws was selected at our state convention.”
This by-law section was poorly thought out. California gets one additional delegate because of its geographical size which provides it with a larger population base to work with. If this was decided on membership per capita I think we you find California in the middle of the pack and states like New Hampshire where people are working harder apparently, in the number one position.
What college graduate thought this up?
In your answer to #4, do I get to be seated on the LNC and participate in the vote to “disaffiliate” myself?
Well, you said the LNC is not allowed to refuse to seat you. If you did not recuse yourself, are they allowed to vote that you have a conflict of interest and can’t vote on the issue? Or, could they vote to disaffiliate prior to seating you?
If the answers are no and no, then yes, you would be allowed to vote (I don’t see another way around it). But if the answer to one of those is yes, that is what should be done.
Your question was
My answer was no.
I also said no to whether the LNC should refuse to recognize your successor under that scenario.
That was what you asked.
Paulie,
In your answer to #4, do I get to be seated on the LNC and participate in the vote to “disaffiliate” myself?
Paulie,
I don’t understand your response to #2.
Who should the LNC recognize? Me or the legitimate folks? It would be a violation of our bylaws to have two state-wide affiliates in the same state.
Addressing the hypothetical itself, aside from the question of how accurately it parallels the Oregon situation:
No and no, I think that would have been legitimate grounds for disaffiliating California. However, getting a new affiliate on the ballot in CA would have cost around a million dollars, so it is very troubling if in fact this is a standard practice for state SOSs to not recognize a new chair until the old chair tells them it’s OK. Sooner or later this will cause some problems that are even bigger than Oregon.
See above.
No. Under your hypothetical situation CA should have been disaffiliated.
No.
No. However, as previously noted that is not what the JC did; they pointed out that a disaffiliation vote was NOT properly held.
That would indeed be a problem, and I imagine that LNC would have re-election problems and that CA would be promptly disaffiliated at the post-convention LNC meeting. However, in my last response I failed to calculate that in fact there are now over six months until the national convention. So, again, the hypothetical does not exactly reflect what happened in the real world.
Paulie,
I said it was hypothetical. I want to see what people’s thoughts are.
CA did not have a problem with quorum in its bylaws. OR under the (2009?) bylaws apparently did have such a problem. Wagner says that he was in fact allowed to remain as chair under the old bylaws, simply because the convention could not get a quorum, but rewrote the bylaws so that a vote could be held by the registered Libertarians, and possibly a different chair elected.
As I further understand it, the meeting that chose the Reeves faction was a meeting of the state exec comm held at the place of the previously scheduled state convention. That state convention did not have a quorum. There is a question as to whether the exec comm had a quorum or not and whether some of the people voting were actually members of that committee. Allegedly, some of them had resigned previously or never provided proof that they were duly elected to the committee.
I’m not up to speed on this. Is that only in your hypothetical, or is that what the Wagner group’s Oregon bylaws state?
Is that supposed to be analogous to Oregon? Since Oregon is not nearly as large as California, it does not get to select its own LNC rep.
But that is not what happened with Oregon.
Thanks…I did not know that. That answers a question I asked on another thread.
Let me ask some questions to those who care to answer.
I served as the Libertarian Party of California chairman from 2001 through 2007, a record six consecutive years in our state party’s history.
When I finished my third consecutive term of office — I did not run for a fourth term — the California Secretary of State asked for me to confirm in writing that I was no longer the Chair and to provide the name of my successor. Had I not done so, they would have left the records unchanged. Of course, I complied with the request.
Now, let’s create a parallel universe hypothetical.
Imagine if instead I decided to rewrite our bylaws, cancel the state party convention and declare that I was to remain as Chair.
1. Do you believe I should be considered the legitimate holder of the office?
2. Do you believe the LNC should refuse to recognize my successor chosen at the “rump” convention merely because the Secretary of State continued to recognize me as the state party chair? Would the LNC be infringing on my state party’s autonomy?
3. My hypothetical new and improved bylaws authorize only the chair to select the over-100 delegates California is allocated to go to the next national convention. Should they be seated?
4. Due to its size, California is entitled to send an LNC regional representative to the LNC, which under the old bylaws was selected at our state convention. But the new and improved bylaws adopted by me allow the state chair to appoint this person, so I decided to appoint myself to serve on the LNC instead of the individual selected at the last convention. Of course, the national bylaws only allow the states to select regional representatives, so the LNC cannot refuse to seat me. Is everyone okay with that?
5. I am on reasonably good terms with many on the LNC. Perhaps I could successfully convince several colleagues to not vote to “disaffiliate” me and thus deprive the LNC of the needed 3/4 vote. Would that somehow make me legitimate?
6. If somehow ¾ of the LNC did “disaffiliate” me for the actions described above, do you believe the Judicial Committee should overturn the LNC on appeal because their reasons are insufficient cause?
7. And what should the Party do if I had performed this maneuver in the six months just prior to the national convention (the LNC is prohibited from disaffiliating a state affiliate during the six months leading up to a national convention)?
My guess is that it is a false rumor.
As I understand it, LPO has sold life membership to people regardless of whether or not they are registered to vote as Libertarians, registered to vote at all, or even live in Oregon. The new definition of membership is that members are those who are registered to vote as Libertarians in Oregon. Thus, anyone who paid for a life membership under the old rules, but does not currently live in Oregon, is not registered to vote, or is registered with another party or as independent is deprived of that membership under the Wagner group’s bylaws.
52 it was represented on FB as his advisors made inquiries. Perhaps that’s overstated, dunno fer sher.
I already addressed that. Let me try again.
I believe what it means is that the default condition in any state is that the entity recognized by that state’s SOS is the same one that is to be recognized by the national LP. That default condition can be overriden by 3/4 of the LNC.
If they only meant to say that the LP of Oregon is the entity that is recognized by the Oregon SOS, why all the extra words to confuse the meaning?
Unfortunately, even though several JC members on both sides have been commenting in this thread, none of them have said which one of us is correct.
People fantasizing about it =/= Johnson’s “camp,” if by camp you mean those who actually have any real influence on him.
I believe that so long as the LNC meets the few affiliation guidelines expressly set forth in the Bylaws, it can use any method it desires to determine which group, among competing groups, to affiliate. I was only expressing my personal opinion that the method used for AZ was a relatively fair one, which went out of its way to respect the wishes of the LP’s AZ members, rather than impose the desires of the LNC on those members.
Bill Hall @ 40 writes:
“6. The corollary here is that if the current LPO is disaffiliated, the LNC must take action to affiliate a new LPO. IMHO, the LNC should then follow the precedent established in the Arizona disaffiliation. There the LNC oversaw a mail ballot election of all AZ LP members as to which faction they wanted to be the new affiliate. The LNC then moved to affiliate the winner (with roughly 67% of the vote) of that election. That was a remedy that respected, as much as possible, the autonomy of the Affiliate members.”
Bill, I would like some clarity here.
I assume you are only expressing your person opinion as to how you would prefer the process to work in affiliating an organization.
I hope you recognize that it is the LNC that decides upon its process for affiliating an entity – assuming the Bylaws give them such leeway, which I’m not certain it actually does – rather than the Judicial Committee.
Or is it your position that the JC has acquired the power to instruct the LNC as to what the proper procedure must be?
@44
Some years ago, my state party had a related problem. We had a membership list that claimed a series of people were perhaps life members. However, several of them including our Treasurer were sure they were not life members, and it appeared the code was set to include monthly donors. There was no record that there were any rules for life membership. The prior leadership had kept the state committee minutes secret from the membership, so we had none of those records.
We finally asked all of them. The two people who thought they were life members had their beliefs honored.
I hate to be on the hobbyhorse here, but it bears repeating:
One of the big issues impacting this whole Oregon matter is a disconnect between bylaws language and LNC claims on one hand, and legal/political reality on the other.
The LNC’s bylaws, almost certainly not for bad or dishonest reasons, define the “Libertarian Party” differently than political parties have come to be defined over the course of a couple of centuries of political and legal evolution.
Over the last decade or so, when the bylaws definitions and the facts of the real world come into conflict, the LNC has tended to double down on those counter-factual definitions (e.g. filing a fraudulent trademark application on the name “Libertarian Party”) rather than ask the bylaws committees and the national conventions to bring the bylaws into conformity with the facts of the real world.
The bottom line is that in the real world, while a state Libertarian Party MAY be an affiliate of the LNC and vice versa, that is not NECESSARILY the case.
The LNC gets to decide, through affiliation and disaffiliation procedures, what organization is its affiliate in any given state.
The LNC does not get to decide what organization is the Libertarian Party of any given state.
Bill Hall’s opinion @40 makes a lot of sense (it is much clearer than the main (Gray) opinion to me). Hall should have included it in the JC’s decision/dissents as a concurring opinion.
The statement of Bill Hall @40 would have made a fine Judicial Committee ruling/opinion in itself, slightly re-drafted for format.
The LNC brief was referring to LPOR membership, not LPUS membership. I read the LNC brief as clearly claiming that the LPOR as of March 31 had members who had paid for life LPOR memberships and who would be ineligible for membership under the Wagner group’s bylaws. Wagner et al never disputed this claim.
Full disclosure: I have paid for life membership in both the LPUS and LPCA.
@43: Does/did the Libertarian Party of Oregon sell life memberships? I know the national LP does.
How can the actions of a state affiliate (any state affiliate) deprive life members of the national LP of any of the rights appurtenant to that membership?
LNC respondents repeatedly made precisely that argument in their briefs:
“These purported governing documents are significantly different from the bylaws of the Oregon affiliate, with a different membership from the Oregon affiliate.”
“At no time did this new organization with its new bylaws and new set of members petition the LNC under Libertarian Party Bylaws Article 6.2 to be recognized as the Oregon affiliate.”
“Instead at the end of the story we have acknowledged the same affiliate remaining in Oregon, still operating under the same bylaws and with the same membership definition as at the beginning of the story.”
“There is a distinction between the officers of an organization and the organization itself. The organization is made up of the membership operating under the rules described in governing documents to which the members have voluntarily subscribed.”
“The change of definition of LPO membership in the “new” bylaws would forever deprive some long-term and even life members of the LPO of any future membership rights, without their having had opportunity to vote on the proposed change. Indeed, some life memberships were previously given in exchange for substantial financial contributions…”
“The purported new bylaws radically re-defined membership, so that the purported new membership is a different group than the membership on March 31, 2011. Under this approach some long-time LPO members would not be permitted to vote on whether or not to ratify an action disqualifying themselves from membership.”
[Emphasis added.]
Bill,
Many thanks for the clarification.
George
Reeves might have used the argument
“There are two groups here. They have different officers, bylaws, *and memberships*. We have continuity of *membership*.
He did not.
I applaud Bill for proactively sharing some of his own contributions to our confidential deliberations. I won’t go into details of what others in the majority did or didn’t say about this topic during our deliberations, but if the majority opinion had been clearer about the “pending” qualification in Bill’s point 4, then I would have changed “final arbiter” to “default arbiter” in my dissent.
I joined in Judge Gray’s opinion, after going through the analysis set forth below. These are my personal opinions on this matter.
1.The Bylaws prohibit the LNC from violating the autonomy of State Affiliates, except as otherwise provided in the Bylaws. That primary exception to the “no violation of autonomy rule” is the “nuclear option” of the LNC disaffiliating “for cause”. The Bylaws do not grant the LNC the power to judge whether a State Affiliate is following its own bylaws, as the LNC purported to do in Oregon.
2. In connection with the Arizona disaffiliation in 1999, I came to the personal opinion, and I believe this was the opinion of many other members of the 3/4 of the LNC that voted for Arizona disaffiliation at that time, that the LNC’s hands were bound by the Bylaws – the only remedy they had to address shenanigans at the State affiliate level was disaffiliation. Thus the reason I characterize it as a “nuclear option.” In my personal opinion, the idea of simply “recognizing” a different set of officers as the “true” AZ officers would not have passed the smell test with that LNC, even though there would have been a lot of arguments that could have been made at the time to support such an approach.
3. Perhaps because of my long experience dealing with ballot access and campaign finance issues, I am acutely aware that our State Affiliates are independent political committees or organizations, whose existence is largely governed by the common and statutory law of their respective states. This means that your typical Secretary of State doesn’t care what the LNC says concerning issues such as which organization is the true LP affiliate in a state, or who the LP nominees for President and Vice President are. The typical Secretary of State only recognizes the authority of the State Affiliate in these and other political matters. Yes, we have Bylaws under which the LP’s State Affiliates loosely affiliate for certain purposes with the national LP and LNC. However, the ties imposed by those Bylaws are few and very limited.
4. For me, some of the most important indicia of who the LP’s current affiliate is in Oregon, pending future negotiation or litigation among LPO members, are:
(a) Which group is recognized by the State as having ballot access. (Wagner’s group)
(b) Which group has possession of the property of the LPO (funds, websites, state mailing list). (Wagner’s group)
(c) Which group in a more general sense (campaign finance filings, contracts, etc.) is the LPO under State law. (Wagner’s group)
Yes, the identity of officers (recall that no one disputes Wes Wagner was the prior, duly-elected Vice Chair, succeeding to the office of Chair under the LPO 2009 Bylaws) and the continuity of the Bylaws are important, but they don’t tell the whole story.
5. Given these factors, I was hard-pressed to conclude that no disaffiliation occurred. The LNC did not follow the disaffiliation process set forth in the Bylaws. It has the power to disaffiliate the Wagner group, for cause, but it has yet to exercise it in accordance with the Bylaws.
6. The corollary here is that if the current LPO is disaffiliated, the LNC must take action to affiliate a new LPO. IMHO, the LNC should then follow the precedent established in the Arizona disaffiliation. There the LNC oversaw a mail ballot election of all AZ LP members as to which faction they wanted to be the new affiliate. The LNC then moved to affiliate the winner (with roughly 67% of the vote) of that election. That was a remedy that respected, as much as possible, the autonomy of the Affiliate members.
Tom@38
Either I typed the number wrong or there has been a displacement.
I agree with your position. Indeed, an affiliate and a separate state party has been the case here and may be the case here in the future.
George @37,
I’m not sure how you think I interpret the decision.
Beyond the fact that it overturned the executive committee’s action, I’m having problems making heads or tails of it.
@35 If one were hypothetically to apply the rule that decisions should be applied no more dramatically than necessary, the second paragraph is an unfortunately overblown way of saying that the Wagner group is the affiliate.
If the decision was supposed to mean that the Secretary of State decision was binding rather than being a fancy way of naming which group is as I type the affiliate, how could the Judicial Committee then go on to say (next paragraph) that the state party that is recognized by the secretary of state may be disaffiliated for cause by a three-quarter vote of the LNC?
The unhappy members of the LNC might sensibly begin by asking for a clarification. For example, if at noon tomorrow the Secretary of State changes his mind about which faction he recognizes, does the decision mean that the Reeves faction is now the affiliate?
I agree you could interpret your decision the way you do, but your interpretation was not argued by any side in the hearing. Indeed, the focus of the two hours of discussion was almost entirely on the ‘autonomy rule’.
35 tk, nice summary. It does seem the Excom’s move was procedurally inappropriate, so now what we have is a bunch of litigious BS. Seems not the best use of anyone’s time, except those who revel in drama.
“Ill fated”? We can’t know that quite yet, I’d suggest.
I see on Facebook some interest on the part of GJ’s camp to get him to contend for the LP nomination. I continue to fantasize that a Paul/Johnson ticket could be somewhat consequential and interesting. LP as vessel? Given THIS turn of events…perhaps not, unless someone can tell me how this legalistic maneuvering adds anything to the case for lessarchy and liberty.
Why is this wrangling not an energetic black hole?
That’s one strange set of rulings and opinions.
While the bare-bones outcome (reining in an executive committee functioning WAY beyond anything resembling its authority) seems correct, the majority opinion is confusing.
That the Libertarian Party of [insert state here] is the organization recognized by the state of [insert state here] is a tautology (political parties are organs of states, period, end of story) that has nothing whatsoever to do with what organization might be the affiliate of the LNC in that state. It is entirely possible — in fact, it has happened — for there to be an LNC affiliate in a state that is not the state’s LP, and for there to be a state LP that’s not affiliated with the LNC.
In point of fact, the LNC’s bylaws spell out affiliation and disaffiliation, and nowhere do they reference state election law as a basis for either.
Was the majority trying to “thread a needle” of some kind and reconcile the LNC’s absurd claim of property in the name “Libertarian Party” with the facts of state election law, by ukase?
My guess is that the next step is for the full LNC to disaffiliate LPO, then wage an ill-fated battle to convince the state of Oregon that they, rather than Oregon’s Secretary of State, gets to decide what organization is that state’s Libertarian Party.
As far as I can tell #32 does not say anything that I did not address @25-26. As for #33
Paragraphs 3 and 4 appear to support the latter interpretation. After all, paragraph 3 says that the LNC can disaffiliate the Wagner group.
I do not see anything in para 3 or 4 that contradicts my understanding of para 2.
Para 2 addresses a default condition; para 3 and 4 addresses how problems arising from that can be dealt with.
I still don’t understand why, if they meant Oregon and only Oregon, they used extra words that make the matter ambiguous.
However, I note that a Judicial Committee member, albeit a dissenter, is in our midst and may be able to answer the question.
Several JC members have commented at IPR. At least two have commented within the last 24 hours, one on each side (it’s possible that others my have done so anonymously, but I haven’t checked and won’t confirm or deny if I do check).
Paragraphs 3 and 4 appear to support the latter interpretation. After all, paragraph 3 says that the LNC can disaffiliate the Wagner group.
However, I note that a Judicial Committee member, albeit a dissenter, is in our midst and may be able to answer the question.
@26
The LNC or a large part of it is taking the most dismayed interpretation of the Judicial Committee decision.
The sentence is “We find that the LP of a particular state, in this case LP of Oregon, is the entity that is recognized by the secretary of state, in this case the secretary of state of Oregon”.
The LNC or a chunk of it is interpreting this to mean that the Judicial Committee is saying that the Secretary of state of Oregon gets to decide who the affiliate is.
The sentence could also be interpreted as
“The LP affiliate in Oregon is the entity that is currently recognized by the secretary of state of oregon.”
Mary Ruwart has never written that “it is AOK for adults to have sex with little kids”. For quotes and analysis of Ruwart’s positions on age-of-consent laws, see http://libertarianintelligence.com/search/label/Ruwart
So many accusations, so little evidence provided…
Trust Wrights, Kubby, Ruwart to be alone with your kids? I wouldn’t? They will probably give the kids LSD and sodomize them?
And some of you say character does not count, well, what does that say about you I wonder. If you trust these scamsters give them any money love or responsibility…I’ll hate to say I told you so but I’m telling you so. You will be up shit creek with no paddle very soon no doubt!
So the deciding vote on this is LEE WRIGHTS? This is why character counts?
You see Lee Wrights, is a two faced individual, who was basically supported financially for many years by his ex wife, then betrayed her with Mary Ruwart the candidate he was managing who is married herself. Now he is supported financially by Ms Ruwart. This guy is a joke, he has temper tantrums like a two year old.
His “business partners” (the business makes no money after it ripped off investers, nevermind) Steve Kubby, brags in his book how he did LSD with his teenage son, makes a nice living off donations from potheads some of them poor, money goes in his pocket. Mary Ruwart who writes that it is AOK for adults to have sex with little kids, how sick is that, and you should not trust these people with ANYTHING…no positions of trust in the party…no candidacy…no board member of anything…no investers dough…certainly not to be your husband or wife, they will screw you, cheat you and drain your bank account…
Mark my words more will be coming out about these scam artists, oh and how about conflict of interest? You bet.
15: Robert at 11 and 13 you bring up examples that are both illegal and immoral. Why not find an example that doesn’t go into those waters?!
me: Sorry, the accusation IS that misrepresentation happened here. People misrepresent ALL THE TIME, haven’t you noticed? Whether they misrepresent on purpose is often an interesting question, one that only mind readers can know. I can’t do that, try as I might.
Why should one dilly dally is the better question?
Myself, I prefer to seek truth in all things, even when inconvenient…
But thanks for your feedback!
“We find that the LP of a particular state, in this case LP of Oregon, is the entity that is recognized by the secretary of state, in this case the secretary of state of oregon”
If they simply meant LPO only, why the extra words?
The way I read it, “particular state” is being used here in the sense of “given state,” ” state X,” or “any state.” That is, it seems to me that the meaning here is “the lp of any given state is the entity recognized by that state’s SOS, and this is how that principle applies in this case.”
If they meant “LPO is the entity recognized by OSOS, although not necessarily for that reason,” I would say they worded it in a poor and badly confusing way.
I don’t read it that way. If that was what they meant, why would they say in this case? To me that implies there are or could be other cases where the more general statement is applicable.
@21 The key word is “particular”. They are saying which group is, at this moment in time, the state affiliate of Oregon.
20: We have to defer to government in many ways when we function as a political party…
me: Agreed, when it makes sense to do so. In this case, it doesn’t, since the state bylaws were violated, and therefore the LNC’s were violated, as I recall.
Now, apparently, the LNC has to go back and do it all over again, and Wagner can block whatever they do.
“David Duke” will appreciate that precedent.
This is not intelligent. The energy drain alone makes it so.
IMO.
# 6 has a point. We should just ignore the state and have elections whenever we want, like maybe in October on the 31st. The hell that November date. Then we can tell everyone we won before they have their election. That’ll save tax dollars and we’ll get more people to like us. Howz dat?
What about paragraph 2 of the majority opinion?
We have to defer to government in many ways when we function as a political party: where the state boundaries are, the dates of elections, filing deadlines and fees, reporting requirements, etc. Some, such as certain ballot access barriers, are indeed quite ludicrous. Nevertheless, we have little choice but to accept them. Of course, we can engage in civil disobedience – say by accepting donations above the legal limit – or we may choose to not be on the ballot because the barriers are too high. YMMV.
The fact that a state regime gives ballot access to a certain group claiming to be the LP is an objective reality. In most states there can be only one party with the same name on the ballot. So, we can sue the state, or recognize an affiliate other than the one recognized by the state regime and qualify it for the ballot under a different name, or ask nicely and hope the state regime changes its recognition. But clearly, state recognition is a major factor when it comes to an entity that participates in state elections, no matter how much we may not like it.
In an ideal world, there is a judicial committee internal to the state party that can resolve disputes within the party. Such a committee did not exist in Oregon.
Thanks George I was going to point out that the issue as to who the state recognizes is not the point.
The point is the failure to follow our own procedures as I read it.
14 I “hope” for a lot of things. It’s a question of presumption. And rules of thumb for how we operate. Deferring to a rubber-stamp function of the government seems off-the-hook ludicrous to me.
Please reread ruling.
The ruling is that the Wagner group, the people recognized by the Secretary of State, is the party. That’s NOT “the Wagner group is the party because they are recognized by the Secretary of State.”
Indeed the Majority explicitly says that the LNC may disaffiliate this group via a 3/4 vote.
Also, the SoS would declare Duke is the group recognize by the state, which has no effect on the group recognized by the LNC.
Robert at 11 and 13 you bring up examples that are both illegal and immoral. Why not find an example that doesn’t go into those waters?!
So if David Duke were to bribe his state Atty General to declare him the Chair of the LA LP, that is enough for the majority in this case?
I would hope a 3/4 disaffiliation vote would be quick and easy in such a case.
So, by extension, if a faction in a state LP misrepresents themselves to the Secretary of State, and the Secretary of State rubber stamps them as the “official” affiliate, that’s OK, too?
Oh, the humanity!
@6 See dissenting vote and opinion from Latham. Latham is an anarchist, at least as of the last time I checked. Dissenting voters Sullentrup and Holtz are not anarchists.
On the majority opinion side, Judge Gray is not an anarchist. I’m not sure on the others.
The only person the JC that I know for sure to be an anarchist (unless his views have changed recently) comes down on your side.
Clearly this is not an anarchist/minarchist question.
right. So if David Duke were to bribe his state Atty General to declare him the Chair of the LA LP, that is enough for the majority in this case?
Sheesh!
Embarrassing, actually…
For those who haven’t read this yet, I highly recommend
http://harrybrowne.org/2000/WasItWorthIt.htm
Why do you think it is powerless to do anything else? It does a number of other things.
I don’t think “anarchist wing” is correct. For example, Chuck Moulton is an anarchist (at least as of the last time I asked). I don’t know whether Lee Wrights is an anarchist.
It’s not necessarily a contradiction in terms for an anarchist to take such a position, even if it seems counterintuitive on the surface.
After all, those anarchists who participate in a political party which takes part in state elections are already dealing with the existence of the state, even though we don’t want it to exist perpetually. You can likewise make the argument that we should organize the party by some units other than states – metropolitan regions, for example. After all, the NYC suburbs in NJ, NY and CT have more in common with each other than they do with rural portions of their states, to take one example. State elections are conducted by state governments, and to the extent that we participate in them we have to play by their rules to at least some extent. To what extent exactly can be debatable, but I don’t think the side which a given person comes down to on something like that necessarily has to follow from whether their desired theoretical end state is a polycentric legal order or a night watchman monopoly state, particularly when neither one is in any way anything like the real world we live in whether we like it or not.
“…the only practical reason to have a national LP is to field a presidential candidate once every four years…”
Given the lack of success of LP Presidential campaigns, and the often embarrassing things our candidates for President have said or done, why do you think running a presidential candidate is “practical”?
Did I lose track of time? Is this April 1st?
Lee Wrights wants to be our Presidential nominee. He just signed onto an opinion saying that the STATE gets to decide who our affiliate is???
I have heard that in the phone conference in this case, someone on the judiciary committee asked Mary Ruwart a multiple choice question about how could the LP identify who are affiliate is:
a) the bylaws of the affiliate
b) whoever has the office key in their pocket
c) whoever the state says it is
And she picked option (c)! She said that it lets the private organization “off the hook” for the burden of having to decide for ourselves, and we can just “defer” to the state.
Well, let’s just let all the public “off the hook” for making their own private decisions about anything and let Obama tell us what to do! Bring on Obamacare! Let’s expand Social Security! Wouldn’t want to have to make any decisions for myself! That would be a burden.
I’m sorry to have lost track of up and down, but when did the anarchist wing of the LP start arguing that we should let the STATE decide these questions?
And a majority of the judiciary committee of the LIBERTARIAN party agreed?
I am so confused…
and yer guys don’t tink MILLIONs of potential members and donors are absorbing every word and movement ???????
The worst Lib is the next one you will meet!
And, so, what does this mean? Are there still 2 LPOs?
Interesting opinion… I don’t really agree with the majority or the main dissent, though I strongly agree with Holtz’s dissent about the dicta: the Libertarian Party should not defer to the Secretary of State for what the affiliate is.
Did the LNC address this at its recent meeting by a disaffiliation / reaffiliation vote? (Obviously I wasn’t at the LNC meeting and I gather the video recording / Phillies summary posted on IPR missed portions of the meeting due to technical difficulties.) I assume not, given that this decision was rendered yesterday. Still, I hope the LNC will use a mail ballot to take action (if any is needed) through the full LNC rather than punting the matter to the EC again or waiting until the next LNC meeting.
More than 3/4 of the LNC signed the brief supporting the ExCom’s credentialing of the Reeves group as the representatives of the LPOR.
In the voluminous materials submitted by the LNC respondents, there was no proposal whatsoever(*) for how the LPOR should handle its quorum problem. The LNC presumably thinks that’s a problem for Oregonians to solve.
The only possible exception was that LNC Secretary Alicia Mattson mentioned during oral arguments that the Wagner group rejected a proposal to change nothing about the LPOR other than its quorum requirement (instead of rewriting the bylaws and increasing membership by 100X). However, she did not explicitly endorse the alternative that the Wagner group rejected.
I have somewhat mixed views on this ruling. On the one hand, I recognize that giving the national LP the ability to meddle in state affiliates gives them the power to do so even when we don’t want them to. On the other hand, this was a pretty straightforward situation – the LP Oregon bylaws were broken, they required a set of conditions to occur to achieve quorum for a convention that were physically impossible, and the national LP was asked to arbitrate between which set of loopholes were the “correct” way to solve this. The Judicial Committee just said the only way to resolve something as straightforward as this is to dis-affiliate, which requires an absolutely insane 3/4 majority to pass. Since quite a few people in the LNC will vote against each other out of spite, that’s a functionally impossible threshold to meet.
I don’t want the national LP poking its nose into states’ tents lightly. On the other hand, we need a better way to handle disputes like Oregon and Arizona than “sort it out yourself”. At this point, the only practical reason to have a national LP is to field a presidential candidate once every four years since it’s absolutely powerless to do anything beyond that.