Proposal: GPCA Governance - GPCA Coordinating Committee election violations

GPCA Governance: GPCA Coordinating Committee election violations

Section 1: GPCA Coordinating Committee election violations, May/June 2016 election

Background: Entering the May/June 2016 GPCA Coordinating Committee elections, a GPCA Coordinating Committee member reported to the Standing General Assembly (SGA) administrator, through an unsolicited email, that one of the applicants for those Coordinating Committee elections had not been registered Green when she applied by the April 25 deadline.  After receiving this information, the SGA administrators contacted the county registrar's office in the county of that applicant, and it was confirmed by the registrar's office that said applicant was not registered Green at the time of her application, nor by the time of the application deadline.

At that point, the SGA administrators removed the applicant's candidacy from the Coordinating Committee election item on the SGA Voting Page, because under GPCA Bylaws the applicant had not been eligible to apply in the first place, and therefore never should have been included on the voting page.

Subsequently, despite the fact that write-in votes for Coordinating Committee are not allowed under GPCA Bylaws - because the only candidates who are eligible to be elected in the first place are those who have applied by the application deadline - when the May/June 2016 GPCA Coordinating Committee elections occurred, there was an organized write-in campaign to elect said applicant.

The write-in campaign was effectuated through a technical loophole, where even though the GPCA does not allow write-in campaigns for Coordinating Committee, the code for the voting page has a write-in option.  

That code for the GPCA voting page originally came from the Green Party of the United States, and was adapted for GPCA use when the GPCA adopted the Standing General Assembly model in 2013, which necessitated on-line voting.

Elimination of that write-in space was on the work docket of the GPCA IT Committee. But because it would be very detailed work in changing the voting page code, so as not to corrupt the site, it would likely require either hiring outside help or spending a lot of internal time by IT Committee members, and neither of those options had been high on the priority list.  Why now?

It was common knowledge within the party at that time, that write-in votes were not tabulated nor counted for two reasons.  First, because the bylaws don’t provide for it. Second ,from a technical standpoint, because there is an option within the voting page software to eliminate any write-in votes cast before the vote is tabulated, that had been used without debate since the creation of the SGA.  Specifically, since the implementation of the Standing General Assembly in 2013 there were Coordinating Committee elections in which a handful of names were written into the write-in spaces.  Those names were eliminated (within the administrative section of the voting software) before the ranked-choice vote tabulation was run, and no one ever argued that those write-in names should have been counted.

Given the desire by some in the GPCA to validate the candidacy for the ineligible applicant and count that applicant's write-in votes, the only option to do so under GPCA bylaws was to propose and approve a bylaws interpretation that would effecuate this result.  This never occured. Instead, an internal committee proposal was made within the Coordinating Committee in July 2016 to conduct an on-line Coordinating Committee vote that would have the effect of unseating one of the Greens elected in the May/June 2016 GPCA Coordinating Committee elections as conducted under past practice, and replacing her with the applicant that had not been eligible in the first place.

First, the Coordinating Committee does not have this authority under the bylaws, as it would first require a bylaws interpretation to declare said candidate eligible in the first place (see below) and second, require a bylaws interpretation to count and tabulate write-in votes.

Furthermore, instead of proactively proposing this result, the proposal was a negative positive, where a vote was proposed to ratify the removal of the the applicant, and if the vote did not pass, the applicant would be thereby be considered an eligible candidate, and the Coordinating Committee vote would be re-tabulated with the write-in votes counted. 

The argument for this unorthodox approach made two points. First, it argued that GPCA Bylaws 3-2, which states that "Only registered Green Party members may serve as members of the Coordinating Committee" (http://www.cagreens.org/bylaws/2016-07-03#Section_3-2_Decision-Making), does not mean as long as someone registers Green before the election is concluded, they could still serve if elected.

Because this interpretation flies in the face of all party practice since the party's founding, a bylaws interpretation to this effect would have been in order under GPCA Bylaws, approved by the Coordinating Committee and forwarded for affirmation by the General Assembly. The Coordinating Committee never considered such an action, nor does it has the unilateral authority to make such an interpretation on its own.

Second, the focus 3-2 misses the eligibility clause in GPCA Bylaws 8-4.2, which precedes the 'eligibility to serve' debate with the 'eligibility to apply' for the position question in the first place. Specifically, Bylaw 8-4.2 reads "Candidates must submit an application to the Coordinating Committee by the last Monday of April to be eligible. Applications must include a biography and what they wish to accomplish on the Coordinating Committee."  (http://www.cagreens.org/bylaws/2016-07-03#Section_8-4_Elections).

While its true that the applicant had applied for the Coordinating Committee by the last Monday in April deadline, the applicant was not a registered Green Party member at the time.  The arguments made for the applicant's ability to serve if elected, were that the applicant was a long time registered Green, and had only temporarily unregistered Green to vote in the Democratic Party primary, and then 'came back in time'.  But no one addressed the argument about the applicant's eligibility, and the logical extension of saying that (a) at a miminum, that anyone who was once registered Green was now eligible to run for the Coordinating Committee, as long as they reregistered Green by the election (or by the start of the Coordinating Committee term), or (b) that any registered voter in California, regardless of their party affiliation past or present, was eligible to run for the Coordinating Committee.

Clearly either such claim would be a fundamental break with GPCA past practice and require a bylaws interpretation.  No such interpretation was every forwarded to the General Assembly.

Finally the advocates of the Coordinating Committee proposal argued that because the applicant had received enough write-in votes to otherwise be elected, that showed that the will of the Standing General Assembly was that she should be elected, without requiring addressing these specific bylaws questions through specific bylaws interpretations, because 'the will of the Standing General Assembly' would override the will of the Coordinating Committee, as expressed administratively by the SGA administrators in removing said applicant.

Of course the irony of the Coordinating Committee deciding this question itself, withouth putting to the SGA in the form of a bylaws interpretation can not be missed.  But more profoundly, what the advocates of the Coordinating Committee proposal were effectively saying, is that in place of a bylaws interpretation regarding the application of a specific party bylaws, any write-in campaign by the SGA can simply overrule said bylaw.  Clearly such an illogical result is not acceptable under GPCA party rules.

Violation #1-1: A candidate for the Coordinating Committee was deemed eligible to serve on the Coordinating Committee, even though they were not registered Green at the time they applied, without the approval of a bylaws interpretation to this effect by the General Assembly or Standing General Assembly.

Violation #1-2: A candidate for the Coordinating Committee was deemed eligible to apply to serve on the Coordinating Committee, even though they were not registered Green at the time they applied, without the approval of a bylaws interpretation to this effect by the General Assembly or Standing General Assembly.

Violation #1-3: Write-in 'votes' were counted and a Coordinating Committee election retabulated even though write-in votes are not provided for under GPCA Bylaws, without the approval of a bylaws interpretation to this effect by the General Assembly or Standing General Assembly.

Violation #1-4: The Coordinating Committee took a vote to effectuate all of the above in violations 1-1, 1-2 and 1-3, without the authority to do so under GPCA Bylaws (http://www.cagreens.org/bylaws/2016-07-03#Section_8-1_Duties_and_Authority), without the approval of a bylaws interpretation to this effect by the General Assembly or Standing General Assembly.

Section 2: GPCA Coordinating Committee election violations, May/June 2018 election

Background: It is a basic legal standard in election laws across the United States that rules for an election must be in place at the time of an election, and that any change in election rules passed in one election can only be applied to the next election.  In conducting the Spring 2018 GPCA Coordinating Committee elections, the GPCA Coordinating Committee violated these basic precepts.

Specifically, the Coordinating Committee proposed a bylaws interpretation that would have established a change in how GPCA Coordinating Committee elections are conducted.  That change was not approved before the Spring 2018 election, yet it was used for that election. 

Under GPCA Bylaws 13-3 (http://www.cagreens.org/bylaws/2016-07-03#Article_13-3_Bylaws_Interpreta...) "In cases of ambiguity or procedural disagreement, the General Assembly shall decide for itself the meaning of its governing documents, the appropriate procedure to be followed and what amendments are necessary to resolve any further ambiguity or disagreement. Between General Assembly meetings, the Coordinating Committee shall decide these questions and the Bylaws Committee is charged with assisting with the Coordinating Committee in this process by providing analysis. Such Coordinating Committee determinations are subject to a 2/3 confirmation by the General Assembly.

The timing for such confirmation is also described in 13-3: If the Coordinating Committee makes such a determination within 60 days of the receipt of the petition, the Coordinating Committee shall place the vote on the draft agenda, and any agenda approved by the General Assembly must include the vote. If an in-person General Assembly is not scheduled to occur within 60 days of the receipt of the petition, the Coordinating Committee shall submit the decision for confirmation by the Standing Green Assembly for an on-line discussion and vote at the next available starting date for on-line proposals, as defined in these bylaws.

At its May 7th, 2018 teleconference, the Coordinating Commitee approved a bylaws interpretation to combine into a single election what has previously been two elections, one for six males and one for six females (http://www.cagreens.org/committees/coordinating/minutes/2018-05-07). With a General Assembly planned for June 17-18 in Stockton in San Joaquin County, Bylaws 13-3 mandated that approval of the bylaws interpretation automatically go before that General Assembly. GPCA Bylaws also require that a draft agenda go out to the counties 42 days before the General Assembly.

However the Coordinating Committee did not have a draft agenda ready at that time to distribute to the County Organizations. Despite this, even if the Coordinating Committee did not have a draft agenda ready to distribute at that time, because inclusion of the bylaws interpretation on the June 17-18 agenda was mandatory, it was incumbent for the Coordinating Committe to send the bylaws interpretation to the County Organizations immediately after approval, so that the County Organizations had the six weeks required to discuss it.

This did not occur. The GPCA Coordinating Committee did not approve a draft budget until the Monday before the San Joaquin General Assembly, only five days before the start of the General Assembly, and never distributed a draft agenda to the County Organizations before the meeting.  At the meeting a draft agenda was presented, but the bylaws interpretation was not on it. At that point, the CC's authority to conduct an election this way had expired, as the CC is subservient to the GA and the time for which it could seek such approval had expired.

Compounding this, after the Coordinating Committee was reminded of this omission before the May/June 2018 Coordinating Committee election vote commenced, the Coordinating Committee then placed the bylaws interpretation on the same ballot as the election, the night before the vote started https://cagreens.nationbuilder.com/sga_election_164_bylaws_interpretatio... This violated the requirement that under GPCA Bylaws, all such decisions require a six week discussion period.  Instead the item was placed before the Standing General Assembly with no discussion.  Then when it received enough votes to pass, the votes were counted after the fact under the new election system.

Violation #2-1: The Coordinating Committee did not put the May 7th bylaws inteepretation before June 2018 General Assembly, as it was required to do under GPCA Bylaws; the failure of which to do so which sun-setted the proposa

Violation #2-2: Coordinating Committee could not put the May 7th bylaws interpretation before Spring 2018 Standing General Assembly under GPCA Bylaws, which it did anyways, because under GPCA bylaws the proposal was required to go before the General Assembly and not the Standing General Assembly; and even if this was not required, under GPCA Bylaws the proposal had sunsetted by that time.

Violation #2-3: Even if it had been legitimate under GPCA Bylaws to place the May 7th bylaws interpretation before the Standing General Assembly, it would have required a six-week discussion period to be compliant with GPCA Bylaws, and no discussion period was provided.

Violation #2-4: The May 7th bylaws interpretation could not be applied to the Spring 2018 Coordinating Committee election, because even if its passage was legitimate under GPCA bylaws, which it was not, the election rules change that would have been effectuated by the bylaws interpretation was not in place before the votes were cast.  Despite this, the Coordinating Committee conducted the election as if the change in bylaws was already in place, which it was not.