Burnt Orange Report

I wasn't at the meeting (I was already scheduled to be out of town when its date was announced and could not change the trip), but I have read various accounts of it (from both sides of the Susan divide), so I'm not going to talk about actions at a meeting I didn't attend.

However, from the accounts of the meeting, it would appear that the number of attending chairs broke 45% of sworn chairs (the minimum count to conduct business is 40%), and that state law requires a 50% quorum in order to swear in new chairs.

Is whome? disputing the underlying law or the sworn-in count? It is not a "procedural game" to require that state law be followed. Any actions taken by a body that does not have a legal quorum to conduct those actions are subject to reversal. Even Terri Hodge, who was apparently hostile to the notion of requiring a quorum, didn't appear to object to the law, only that "we never required it before", if I understand correctly.

I would assume that the dueling signin sheets would prove whether or not a 50% quorum was ever attained, and thus, whether it would even have been possible to swear in the new chairs. Perhaps we should review those to determine whether the charge of "procedural games" is true. Certainly the vote totals I've heard on the motions that passed wouldn't seem to support the assertion that 50% of already-sworn chairs were present.

And, by the way, it's not "paranoia" if you actually have enemies.

As secretary, I can assure you that the secretary's list was more accurate than the chair's. This was because we CALLED the members of the executive committee, found out if they had resigned, and found out if they were dead. The chair has never done this.

David, that assertion of the list's relative accuracy doesn't answer my question--did 50% of precinct chairs ever sign in to achieve a swearin quorum, using either list? I ask this because I was told the votes that were taken were lopsided (90-something to 50-something, if I recall), but that's less than 50% of the 300-something PC's that both sides seem to believe is a correct number, although the 300-somethings appear to be different numbers. While it's true that some PC's attending could (and probably did) choose not to vote on those issues, the totals themselves don't appear to indicate that 50% was mustered.

I don't know who has the assigned responsibility for the maintenance of the PC list, although I have certainly done some work on it at the direction of others, but it would seem to be a simple matter to take the filed ballot applications from 2004, add in the known sworn in at the May 2004 EC meeting (presumably the minutes of the meeting will indicate the identity of those sworn), then begin removing the resigned and the departed (both meanings of the word) via telephone calls. This would lead to a correct list after all that effort. I don't doubt that a list in which a one-time recent effort was made specifically to remove the no-longer-serving would be more accurate than one which was merely an attempt to track new people as they signed up.

Given the amount of criticism being aimed at Susan due to the fact that no new PC's were sworn in at this meeting, it would seem to be a relevant point, as the failure to attend by others should probably not be ascribed to her. And, by the way, if the "insurgents" were truly interested in swearing in new chairs (which reason for the meeting I heard expressed by them at meetings of 3 clubs at which this meeting was pitched), they could have scheduled such a swearing in at the beginning of the meeting, rather than after their resolutions were voted on. The order of the agenda set by them reveals their assessment of the importance of the various activities, and I doubt that the contentiousness of the meeting came as any surprise either to its organizers or most of the experienced PC's. Certainly anyone who attended the May 2004 DCEC meeting should have anticipated a descent into chaos at this one (absent Tasers). If the meeting started out with a swearin quorum but ended without one due to walkouts, at least a portion of the blame for that must be allocated to the placement of swearing-in low on the agenda.

I found out from a neighbor that the "real" meeting was at the Democracy for America meetup.

I may not have been sworn in as precinct chair, but I'll continue to work--WITH OR WITHOUT the county party!