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.