2 posts tagged “hays county”
While the interest in this year's presidential election has seen an amazing voter turnout and will likely have a good effect on the number of people involved in the process in future, all is not smooth sailing. Many first-timers are finding out the hard way what years of political inactivity do to the voice of the people. Those who are accustomed to playing the game and getting their way are usually allowed to do so without much argument or attention. So that now when the newbies who aren't even versed in parliamentary procedure try to raise a protest, they get bulldozed.
See the following case in my hometown, El Paso, Texas and its county convention as covered by Newspaper Tree, a relatively young and locally owned property of El Paso Media Group. (I posted a comment to the article--it's at the bottom of the following link and is also pasted below--that describes a little more of my own county convention experience.)
Delegate Decision Splits Democrats, and Could Threaten El Paso's Place at State Convention
by Sito Negron
The question is whether the Credentials Committee should have awarded the bulk of the 48 at-large delegates to Obama, to bring the overall El Paso state delegate number closer to the 3-1 ratio of delegates at the county convention.
Posted on April 1, 2008 • read more »
My comment:
A native El Pasoan, I now live in Kyle, Texas just outside Austin and was a precinct 223 delegate for Clinton to the Hays County Convention. While I'm concerned for El Paso's place in the state convention, I certainly would support the party's decision to unseat delegates if process was indeed "hijacked" or otherwise circumvented.
In the case of Hays County, the majority of precincts went for Obama and therefore the delegates as well--approx 68%. However, the slate of at-large delegates that was presented by the nominating committee, and approved by the convention, was about 2/3 Clinton delegates. While this might seem disproportionate to the popular vote, the nominating committee took pains to ensure that the county delegation would mirror the make-up of the county population. This meant recommending a greater proportion of female and Hispanic delegates than other groups, hence the 2/3 of at-large delegates that were for Clinton. (This does not appear to have been the process followed in El Paso.)
When the nominating committee brought the slate of at-large delegates to the floor there was some dissent when the ratio of Clinton to Obama was announced. However, after the chairman explained the process, and it was also explained that the overall ratio of Clinton to Obama delegates was not drastically affected, the crowd quieted down and a few moments later called the question. We unanimously approved the at-large slate and completed seating our delegation.
I should mention that among the resolutions we passed, one in particular most accurately represented the overall spirit of the Hays County Democratic Convention and, I hope, the Democratic Party as well. We unanimously approved a resolution from the floor that in November we would support whichever candidate received the party nomination, regardless of who we were currently supporting.
I am sorry that El Paso was not able to work from a similar place of unity and instead appears to have allowed in-fighting and personal interpretations of process to mar the convention. As a Clinton supporter, I would consider losing the El Paso delegation a terrible blow, but perhaps--in the end--it will be an important lesson in the need for compromise at all levels of the political process and will spur El Pasoans to become ever more involved in future election cycles and to actively use, and protect, their political voice.
[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.
