Another difficult year on the state platform committee

After suc­cess­ful­ly chair­ing my con­gres­sion­al dis­trict plat­form com­mit­tee this year, I joined up with the Iowa Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty state plat­form com­mit­tee again. This is my eighth cycle in a 16-year span. I was elect­ed sec­re­tary of the state plat­form com­mit­tee in 1998, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012. I resigned as sec­re­tary in 2013 because the state plat­form chair and the state par­ty staff rearranged the plat­form after I had sub­mit­ted it to the par­ty and did not tell me about it until I arrived at a pub­lic hear­ing and my line num­bers did not match what was being dis­trib­uted at the pub­lic hear­ing. Things are not going a whole lot bet­ter this year.

The first meet­ing of the plat­form com­mit­tee on May 3 was can­celled because some of the mem­bers want­ed to attend anoth­er meet­ing. I guess Democ­rats all have to go to the same meet­ings. I asked if we would get an addi­tion­al week to draft the plat­form and could not get an answer. I have since got­ten the answer and the answer is no, we will not get an addi­tion­al week to work on the plat­form. We just lost a week.

The sec­ond meet­ing of the plat­form com­mit­tee was sup­posed to start at 11:00 a.m. on May 10, but they had sched­uled anoth­er meet­ing at the same time. Again, it seems like Democ­rats all have to be at the same place at the same time to get any work done. So, every­one who showed up on time was forced to wait for the meet­ing to start. It took a total of 2.5 hours to elect three peo­ple as per­ma­nent offi­cers. I was accused of mak­ing motion after motion to delay the meet­ing, but I nev­er made any motions. I ran for plat­form chair and got a tie vote of 27 to 27 on the first vote, then 25 to 25 on the sec­ond vote, and I final­ly lost 26 to 27 on the final vote. I was nom­i­nat­ed for vice chair, but I refused. I was nom­i­nat­ed for sec­re­tary, but after I accept­ed that nom­i­na­tion some­one moved that we have co-sec­re­taries. I was then added as a can­di­date for the elec­tion of co-sec­re­taries with­out any­one ask­ing me if I accept­ed. I made an objec­tion and said I had not accept­ed any nom­i­na­tion for co-sec­re­tary. My name was removed, and they elect­ed two co-sec­re­taries.

Not every­one was on board with the delay, and a motion was made to seat the alter­nates and start the meet­ing. It was agreed to seat the alter­nates around noon, but it was not agreed to start the meet­ing. There were 48 peo­ple in the room (a mix of elect­ed mem­bers and alter­nates) and the com­mit­tee has total vot­ing strength of 50 elect­ed mem­bers. It was then approved to seat the next two peo­ple that walked in (either elect­ed mem­bers or elect­ed alter­nates), until the strength was a full 50. How­ev­er, this did not leave room for the peo­ple still at the oth­er meet­ing. A sug­ges­tion was made that we increase the num­ber to over 50, but that motion was nev­er made because it was agreed it would be out of order. Then a sug­ges­tion was made to unseat some of the alter­nates, but that motion was nev­er made because it was agreed it would be unfair. Final­ly, some­one men­tioned that the state par­ty can appoint up to 8 at-large mem­bers. It was then agreed that the miss­ing mem­bers would be seat­ed as appoint­ed mem­bers by the state par­ty when they came in. All this took about 1.5 hours before we start­ed hav­ing elec­tions.

I’ve seen some bad meet­ings before, but this one took the cake.

I’ve pro­posed some amend­ments to the Iowa Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Con­sti­tu­tion that I hope will begin to address some of these prob­lems. You can read my pro­posed amend­ments by click­ing here.

• Set quo­rum at 40%
• Set the first meet­ing the week imme­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing the con­ven­tion at which the mem­bers are elect­ed
• Set the time for start­ing the meet­ing at 15 min­utes, after which any mem­ber can call the meet­ing to order
• Elect per­ma­nent offi­cers as soon as there is a quo­rum
• A quo­rum is any com­bi­na­tion of mem­bers and alter­nates, as long as the num­ber allowed for a con­stituent unit is not exceed­ed (on the state plat­form com­mit­tee, each con­gres­sion­al dis­trict gets a spe­cif­ic num­ber of mem­bers)
• appoint­ed mem­bers must be appoint­ed before the meet­ing starts, not 1.5 hours after the meet­ing has start­ed

I think we will still need to amend the bylaws to get con­stituent units to report their plat­forms and elec­tions imme­di­ate­ly so we can actu­al­ly start work­ing on the next con­ven­tion with­in 7 days of the pre­vi­ous con­ven­tion or cau­cus.