UDL Convention, December '10 (Official business complete.)

[Marokai Backbeat]

Now that we have roughly everyone we would expect, we can start getting into the structure of the party, more specifically leadership posts first of all. After that, we can get into platform, color, logo, and all that other fun stuff. (Of course, feel free to chat about it now on the side if you like.)

All relevant posts to current theories about leadership position structure are the following:

Party leadership structure idea:

Symbolic leader: "President" (Elected via popular vote on whatever term people want it to be upon further discussion of these ideas.)

Party organizer and negotiator: "Chairman" (Elected via Executive Council.)

Executive council consists of three seats elected with the usually system for at-large elections by all members of the party, and each of these three councilmen decide who the "Chairman" is in times of vacancy or immediately after their 3 or 4-month terms.

To be fair, the Chairman shouldn't be allowed to be an exec. council member, since that would be an unfair advantage (vote for yourself, then just try to get one more person to vote for you, and then you're in).

We could also have a 'whip' position similar to the Populares and JCP, if people wanted that. I'm just posting this here for discussion's sake, and the real nitty gritty can be done in a proper convention thread shortly.

If there's a lot of interest, the Council could be expanded to 5.

I agree with this. There are a lot of "Chiefs" in this party who want to be chiefs and not "indians". Rather, there are people who actively like to participate rather than remain backbench party members.

Suggestions:

To be fair, the Chairman shouldn't be allowed to be an exec. council member, since that would be an unfair advantage (vote for yourself, then just try to get one more person to vote for you, and then you're in).

I think that this would cause people to shy away from running for the Executive Council, but I definitely see what you're getting at here. I'd suggest that a majority vote of the other members of the Council be necessary to elect a Councilman to the Chairmanship (so that in a three-man Council, the other two would have to approve, and in a five-man Council, three of four would have to approve). That levels the playing field, since the same number of people have to agree either way.

Also, in keeping with our democratic theme, I think all positions should have two-month terms, to increase accountability. That has the added benefit of making elections coincide with the upcoming Convention.

Have at it!

[Marokai Backbeat]

I'd also like to say I have absolutely no problem with Xahar's ideas concerning council members who want to attempt being Chairman, and am fine with 2 month terms and 5 council positions.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I'll strongly support term limits for party officers.

Consecutive term limits, absolutely.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I'll strongly support term limits for party officers.

Consecutive term limits, absolutely.

Is my plan ok with you then?

Yeah it seems good to me.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I think it'd be pretty simple to just divide the party responsibilities up between the council members after their election. They're not terribly important positions that we need a specific position for.

[Marokai Backbeat]

(Alright let's actually post this in the right spot, now )

I'm happy to see campaigning for the council seats kicking off already, but to play this carefully, we should vote on our leadership structure

So, acting as some sort of interim chairman here for the purposes of the vote, let's vote on establishing the following positions:


Leadership Structure

1. President of the UDL, elected by all party members to a two month term. In the event of a vacancy, there shall be a special election to fill the position for the remainder of the term.

2. Executive Council, which shall consist of five individual council positions, elected by all members of the party, and shall decide amongst themselves party duties such as Whip, Secretary, etc. All Executive Council members shall have two month terms, and in the event of a vacancy, there shall be a special election to fill the position for the remainder of the term.

3. Chairman of the UDL, elected by majority vote by the Executive Council to two month terms, shall be responsible for leading and organizing the party, as well as opening conventions and votes, and representing the UDL to other parties. In the event of a vacancy, the Executive Council shall, by normal procedure, appoint someone to fill the position for the remainder of the term.

In the event that an Executive Council member attempts to be Chairman of the UDL, he or she must attain the normal amount of votes required for anyone else aside from that person's vote. Three votes will be required, not counting that person's vote.

4. All members shall be held to a consecutive term limit of two terms, serving for a maximum of two terms in a row, and holding no position or another position for the equivalent of one term before he or she is able to hold that position again.


We have 23 members according to Kalwejt's count. Let's try to get at least 12 members voting in total, for legitimacy's sake. I don't think that will be too hard.

[Marokai Backbeat]

That seems like everything we discussed, then, yes?

I'll vote aye.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Okay, so hold up everyone, let's try this again

Xahar's bylaws are longer and written more like bylaws. What I wrote was just quickly scribbling out something to keep us from getting too ahead of ourselves without any structure.

So I'm going to restart the vote just this once and vote on Xahar's bylaws instead, with just one small addition of my own:

You must be logged in to read this quote.

So vote one more time, everyone!

[Marokai Backbeat]

Aye

[Marokai Backbeat]

In the interest of moving this along speedily, I'll go ahead and close this vote, there's no point in waiting any longer.

15 Ayes (79%)
4 Nays (21%)

Xahar's proposed bylaws (with my little adoption) have passed.


Now is probably a good time to decide on when we'll elect the Council and party President. What is a decent time to start that, in everyone's mind? I'd like to give people a bit of time to campaign for the position, of course. It's only fair.

In the meantime while that's decided and when we eventually do elect those people, we should probably discuss fun stuff like adopting an official logo and party color, even though it's almost been decided for us, it seems, since the RG is using a bright-ish red for us and Al hastily put together a logo that looks pretty nice, but it can't help to be official. Discuss!

[Marokai Backbeat]

I am opposed to red it's too cliché.

i like orange

I agree, actually. It'd be nice to have something different from red. Orange would be an interesting change, or Fuschia, as Antonio is often talking about liking that color.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Gold is a nice color but it kills my eyes in a forum setting.

[Marokai Backbeat]

I was out for just few hours and Marokai already ended first voting

We got 19 votes really fast.

[Marokai Backbeat]

If we're going with red then we should just use the logo that Al made.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Lordie, the debate just flies away when you're not here for awhile.

1. Orange
2. Fuschia

No on expanding the council to 7.

People are going to be cycling through the council because it has term limits. It's nice that alot of people want to be in the council, but we need to think about the long term consequences of letting a huge number of people on the council right away. Let's not turn this into the Northeast Assembly, here.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Welcome to the party, PS. It's awesome to have you

[Marokai Backbeat]

I kind of agree with polnut. I think it's absolutely fantastic to see a bunch of people interested in running, but the UDL just formed and although we must be as open and democratic as possible, if we're to survive, we also need to be smart.

I don't want the UDL to be seem as a party that any left-winger can drop into and then expect to get support of the entire party. We may be a party with a, hopefully, refreshing style, but we also need to expect people to, well, be in it for the party, and not as a group of people who are here to vote for them just because they hopped on the bandwagon.

[Marokai Backbeat]

The thing is, the system we use isn't Borda count, it's STV. First and second preferences aren't really necessary. If one of the candidates doesn't gain traction, then the votes will flow fully to one that does.

Especially since we're a new party and we don't know how strong we are, I don't want to take any chances when it comes to running too few candidates.

Fair enough. As long as we stick together for the most part I suppose it won't harm us much.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Rank the following candidates:

[4] Sewer
[1] HappyWarrior
[3] Kalwejt
[6] Belgiansocialist
[5] Polnut
[2] Hashemite
[7] Al

President of the Union of the Democratic Left

Rank the following candidates:

[2] Dr. Cynic
[1] Purple State
[  ] Write-in: __________
[  ] None of the above

[Marokai Backbeat]

Are we doing anything about the Senate candidates, 'cause we don't have much time if we are...

30 hours.

Another reason I don't think we should limit our Senate candidate this time around. Lets limit them for the future, and lets limit it at 3.

I agree this time around, let's just let have everyone run, then we can do this EARLY in the next convention, I'll still be arguing for 2.

Yeah, this time let's just let things play out as they do, we can talk about limiting endorsements when we have more time before the next elections.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Um... how long have we been voting on exec council?... seems like a while...

It'd probably be safe to end the voting right now, but I don't exactly know how to count the executive council election. There's a reason I've never been in charge of Atlasian elections.

I can count the President race, though, since that's just for one position, but there's a slight problem..

Purple State: Antonio, Albaleman, HappyWarrior, Thomas D, Teddy, Purple State, Ilikeverin, Sbane, Marokai, Kalwejt, Ogis.

Dr. Cynic: Hans, Hashemite, Dr. Dynic, Hawkeye59, polnut, realisticidealist, EarlAW, belgiansocialist, Sewer Socialist, Wisconsin Gurl, Winston Disraeli.

It's currently an 11-11 tie.

[Marokai Backbeat]

Why do I get the feeling someone is going to nominate me to count this election

Hey Teddy, I've got an idea..

[Marokai Backbeat]

Why do I get the feeling someone is going to nominate me to count this election

Hey Teddy, I've got an idea..

>.<

Pretty please?

I'll vote for Cynic in recognition of his long service to Atlasia (and also because Purple State was mean to me once).

Didn't stop Marokai.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=59079.msg2096012#msg2096012

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=59079.msg2550318#msg2550318

No it did not.

[Marokai Backbeat]

When do you need it counted by

We can just end voting now and have you count right away, since Xahar tipped the Presidential election in favor of Dr. Cynic, there's nothing worth waiting for now.

[Marokai Backbeat]

The wonderful Quebecois intellect of the party, everyone.

Alright, thanks to Max, we actually know the council now. (Voting is now over.)

Kalwejt,
HappyWarrior,
Sewer Socialist,
Hashemite,
Al.

Due to Xahar's tiebreaking vote, Dr. Cynic is now President of the UDL.

The council should now meet and elect the Party chairman. I'll crate a new thread for them to do their work there.


Also, I'm really really sorry to Polnut. He deserves a position in this party, as he's been one of the most vocal voices moving us along and was with us in the beginning hours. I would implore the new Council to elect Polnut to be chairman of the party.