The Libertarian Party’s newly elected Judicial Committee members have filled the remaining five seats on the body, selecting a group of longtime party figures who did not initially seek the position during the party’s national convention.
Judicial Committee members Avens O’Brien and Ken Moellman announced the appointments Sunday, naming Patrick Dixon, Mary Gingell, Sam Goldstein, Chuck Moulton, and Geoffrey Neale to the committee. The seven-member body hears internal party appeals, including challenges involving affiliate revocations, delegate suspensions, and claims that Libertarian National Committee decisions violate the party’s bylaws.
The vacancy situation followed the Libertarian National Convention last month in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where delegates elected O’Brien and Moellman out of a field of 17 nominated candidates.
O’Brien received 387 votes and Moellman received 373 during the first day of convention business. However, because they were the only candidates to receive majority support and the rules stipulated a single round of voting, the remaining five seats were treated as vacancies to be filled by the committee once the new term began.
In their announcement, O’Brien and Moellman said they received and considered a substantial amount of “solicited and unsolicited advice” before making the appointments. They also based their judgments on a similar situation in 2016, when three elected Judicial Committee members made the choice to appoint the remaining four members from an entirely new pool rather than selecting from candidates who had failed to receive majority support at convention.
The two said they applied several criteria in making their selections. Appointees had to have at least four years of Libertarian Party membership, not currently serve on the Libertarian National Committee, not have been nominated for Judicial Committee at this year’s convention, and have previously received majority delegate support for some national party office or nomination. They also said they looked for people with long-term party involvement who had not been “notable lightning rods of controversy” in recent years.
The five appointees are all veteran Libertarian Party figures with prior national or state party leadership experience. Dixon, Goldstein, Moulton, and Neale have each served on the Libertarian National Committee in past roles, while Gingell and Neale are both former national chairs. Several also previously led state affiliates, including Dixon and Neale in Texas, Gingell in California, Goldstein in Indiana, and Moulton in Pennsylvania and Virginia.
“Each of these individuals have multiple decades of experience in Libertarian activism just like we do, have shown solid understanding of our Party, its Operations and our Bylaws, are rules oriented and fair, and have come to different but reasonable conclusions on a number of issues over their many years in our party,” the statement read.
Under party rules, the seven will serve through the next non-presidential-year national convention, which will be the 2030 Libertarian National Convention.
Seebeck, filling a vacancy and filling a seat which was never filled are not the same thing. A vacancy occurs if convention delegates elected a person to the Judicial Committee or if a Judicial Committee which can reach quorum, which means having at least 5 out of the 7 seats filled and present for a meeting where the action is taken, appointed a person to the Judicial Committee, and that person resigns or dies or becomes medical incapacited or gets removed for unethical behavior. This is not what happened. The 5 empty seats on the current Judicial Committee were never filled, they were not vacated seats The 5 empty seats were never filled at the convention because all attempts at voting to fill them either by one or more round of voting or by plurality got blocked, even though we had most of Saturday, all day Sunday and Monday, a day in which the convention was adjourned earlier than it could have been, to fix this problem. So the 5 seats on the Judicial Committee in question are not vacated seats, they are unfilled seats.
The 2 elected members of the Judicial Committee have no authority to appoint people to the 5 unfilled seats because they lack the 5 member of the committee requirement to have quorum.
Andy,
The quorum requirements are for a meeting, and yes, they didn’t have quorum to do that.
BUT…Article 13 also applies to the JC and the sitting members can do email votes to fill vacancies. In fact, that’s the only way they can do it with less than 5 members. And according to Moellman, that’s what they did.
So, yes, the other 5 were seated in accordance with the Bylaws.
The issue isn’t that, but the alleged criteria that were used to select the 5 members, none of which actually ran, one was a Chair 30+ years ago, and of them all, only one (Moulton) got 1 write-in vote (OH).
How they deal with LPNH and everything else coming at them is on them. Time will tell.
>Seebeck, the bylaws say nothing of the sort. They do not put any limits on the number of ballots either for at large members or for the JC. That has also not been the custom.
As was stated before: The Bylaws are silent on multiple rounds of voting for At-large or JC, but are not on officers and P/VP nominations. Because they are silent, it is not authorized. Had it been authorized, it would be in there. You know better. 56:68(4). And BTW, you haven’t been around long enough in the LP to know what the custom is, either.
>The rules maybe suspended in the of at large members or the JC, but they were not. Further, there was a timely point of order (23:6 e).
And that point of order was ruled as not well taken, appealed, and lost.
Jordan Willow Evans, the LPNH bylaws are here: https://mywikis-wiki-media.s3.us-central-1.wasabisys.com/lpedia/NH-Bylaws-2024-01-20.pdf
If you have a problem getting to that site, just ask me to email them. Note that prior bylaws are here: https://lpedia.org/wiki/Index_of_New_Hampshire_State_Party_Bylaws
@Jordan here’s a copy of the bylaws that were operative from 2023 until their convention this year
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IolpdjqX-XSnmzEA-JoOhtNiGB8P0m5V/view?usp=sharing
J. M. Jacobs: You’ve been quite informative, and I gather that you’re something of a bylaws guy. Do you happen to have a copy of the 2024 LPNH bylaws?
Andy, LPNH will have to challenge the LNC’s decision. First things first.
J.M. Jacobs, what do you think happens from here with the JC and the LP of NH?
It appears to be that the 5 appointees to the JC are all invalid and if they get seated and act on the JC it will be an act of fraud.
Jordan Willow Evans, my understanding is that Kauffman was not a voting member of the board at the time. Article VI, M 1 of the LPNH bylaws requires a lapse of time for someone to go from an interim appointment to a full voting member of the board.
If that is the case, Kauffman not only did not vote to endorse Trump, but COULD NOT on the matter at all.
The LNC showed poor judgement in not checking that aspect before considering the motion.
If Jeremy Kauffman did not vote in the Trump endorsement vote then he can’t be held liable for it (even if he voiced support for it).
The LP of NH can’t get a JC appeal now because the LNC lacks a JC. The judicial committee has 2 elected members who lack quorum and therefore can’t make sppointments or do anything else, so the 5 appointments are all invalid
I do not know if the current LP of NH Committee has commented on the 2024 LP of NH Committee endorsing Donald Trump, but since the 2026 committee has entirely different people on it they can’t be held liable for what those on the 2024 committee did.
As for their social media posts, I agree that some of them have been nasty and inappropriate, but I am not aware of any which violated libertarian principles (making insulting comments is not a NAP violation). Whether or not rude social media posts should get one disaffiliated is open to debate. I think it would have been better to negotiate with them to try to get them to clean up their social media posts. Say give them 30 days or 60 days or something like that to clean it up, instead of rushing to a disaffiliation vote.
Adamson Scott: On that claim, I happen to have the minutes from the meeting where the state party endorsed Trump. Unless I’m misunderstanding how LPNH treats its secretaries and orders its minutes, Kauffman had in fact been a member of the Executive Committee at the time of the vote, though he had only just joined the body. That said, he did not participate in the endorsement motion, so this may be more an issue of semantics than anything else. IPR has an article on the appeal currently available on Substack, which will land on the main site in a few days.
Andy, in one of your many comments, you mentioned that the 2026 NH LP should not be punished for what the 2024 NH LP did. Did the 2026 version publicly repudiate what the 2024 version did? If not, let them do so in their appeal. That said, the NH LP has engaged in a lot of un-libertarian behavior in their social media accounts between 2024 and 2026. There’s more than enough to disaffiliate them on since the Trump endorsement.
Apparently the LNC Judicial Committee needs 5 members to have quorum. Whether it is 4 or 5 needed for quorum 2 is not enough for quorum? and without quorum appointments can’t be made and nothing else can be done.
Any state affiliate which gets disaffiliated by the LNC is entilted to an appeal with the Judicial Committe, but since the LNC does not have a legitimate Judicial Committee at the moment, due to the only 2 elected members lacking quorum to make appointments (the 5 appointments made are invalid), or to do anything else, the LP of NH can’t get an appeal.
This creates a very bad situation. The LNC may have to re-affiliate the LP of NH or face a lawsuit.
The LP of New Hampshire Committee in 2024 who voted to endorse Donald Trump are not the same LP of New Hampshire Committee of today. None of the people on the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire Committee of 2026 were on it in 2024, so holding this charge against them today is punishing them for something they did not do. This charge should be dropped.
I agree that the LP of NH Committee of 2024 should have been disaffiliated for endorsing Trump, but the LNC at the time decided to censure them for this instead This is water under the bridge and should not be held as a charge against the LP of NH Committee of 2026 because they are different people.
Jake, they get due process, before a PROPERLY formed JC. If that is not done, they cannot be removed.
Andy,
LPNH has no legal recourse. They were disaffiliated for committing the ultimate sin in clear violation of the national Libertarian Party bylaws:
YOU DO NOT ENDORSE AN OPPONENT OF AN OPPOSING PARTY CANDIDATE OVER YOUR OWN.
They’re the ones who screwed up, and they rightfully got tossed on their behinds for it. Any judge would look at this and laugh LPNH out of the courtroom AND force them to pay damages to the LNC.
Andy, you are absolutely correct.
Unless there is some way to fairly elect 5 members to the judicial committee to replace the 5 invalid appointees, the current judicial committee can’t do anything. Any action they take under the current make up of the committee is automatically null and void.
This means the LP of NH can’t get a judicial committee appeal of their disaffiliation.
Lawsuits could be coming. This may get ugly.
The quorum requirement for the JC is 5 members. With only two JC members, how did they meet the quorum requirement? They couldn’t.
The solution is to leave the JC with two members and allow the delegates at the next national convention elect the remaining members.
LP Bylaws ARTICLE 8: JUDICIAL COMMITTEE
1. The Judicial Committee shall be composed of seven Party members elected at each regular non-presidential convention and any five members shall constitute a quorum.
It means that the current judicial committee can’t do anything. Any action they take is automatically null and void. This could invite lawsuits.
Yes, the timing for this is particularly bad, but this would be bad no mattee when it happened.
Andy: What does that mean in practice? Given that the bylaws both allow the remaining Judicial Committee members to fill vacancies and require the committee to have a quorum to act, I can see why there are two conflicting interpretations here.
As an aside, given everything happening with LPNH, this seems like the worst possible time for there to be any type of uncertainty over the Judicial Committee.
Quorum is needed for a 7 seat committee to make appoitments or to do anything else. It takes 4 people on a 7 seat committee to have quorum. 2 people on a 7 seat committee can’t have quorum and therefore can’t make appointments, therefore none of these appointments are valid. The current LNC Judicial Committee has 2 people on it and 5 empty seats. Since 2 people can’t establish quorum they can’t do anything.
This is what my research indicates. Prove me wrong if you can (I doubt anyone can).
Seebeck, the bylaws say nothing of the sort. They do not put any limits on the number of ballots either for at large members or for the JC. That has also not been the custom.
The rules maybe suspended in the of at large members or the JC, but they were not. Further, there was a timely point of order (23:6 e).
While 46:33 is a valid point, so is 56:68(1) and (4). Because multiple rounds were authorized in the Bylaws for other races (officers, P/VP), and were silent on At-large and JC, they are prohibited for AL and JC (56:68(4)). That’s the situation the LP operates under and what the delegates decided the Bylaws meant (56:68(1)).
Had there not been multiple rounds authorized in the Bylaws for other races, then 46:33 would apply (as would 46:32 for other races).
Jordan, absent a special rule or bylaw, the rules in RONR bind.
The rules for at-large do NOT limit voting at one round. RONR requires additional voting when no candidate gets a majority (46:33).
My understanding was also that, in 2016, the LNC voluntarily agreed to be bound the the unofficial LNC. Even if they were to do that now, it would not bind any other party to a dispute.
J. M.: Perhaps I overstated the language. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but the bylaws and convention rules state that Judicial Committee elections follow the same process as at-large elections. Since those rules do not specify any additional rounds of voting beyond what to do in the event of a tie, wouldn’t that mean they account only for the initial round unless there is some separate parliamentary action to allow more ballots?
No rule, nor any past practice specifies only one round of voting.