All those in favor, say Aye!
[I wrote this yesterday, but didn't get a chance to post until today.]
It's clear from today's county convention that it would greatly help the local political process if Robert's Rules of Order was required high school curriculum and not just the domain of mock-trial and government nerds. The majority of delays that occured on the convention floor were the result of people's ignorance of the process and various officials and/or fellow delegates explaining what was going. (The other issue was that the majority of people participating were doing so for the first time.)
Without going into details that you can find elsewhere, if you've ever attended a board meeting or some sort of meeting that was used parliamentary procedure and was handled in "general convention" style, that's what we did. We caucused, at the precinct level, to select delegates to the state convention; then heard and approved/rejected resolutions for party platform recommendations; approved the slate of at-large delegates recommended by the nominating committee; and finally voted to adjourn. Convention began at 11 am, after several hours available for precinct delegates to sign-in, and adjourned after 7 pm. It sounds like a long day, but other, larger counties had even longer days.
Overall, I think the experience was great for political activity in the long run. Though older faces still outnumbered the young ones, there was a good representation of young professionals and parents and I think all the neighboring cities are going to see a crop of next generation candidates in these next several election cycles.
Here are some photos of the day. It's mostly B-roll stuff, but it was rather quaint to be handling governmental business at the middle school just down the street from my house.
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