The People's Convention, February and also March 2015 - Foucaulf wins primary.

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X Varavour

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ENDORSEMENT BALLOT
President and Vice President
[ 3 ] bore/Bacon King (Labor/TPP)
[ 2 ] Potus2036/Maxwell (Federalists/D-Rs)
[ 1 ] Write in: Polnut / Cincinnatus

SOUTHEAST SENATE

[1] Hagrid

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ENDORSEMENT BALLOT
President and Vice President
[3] bore/Bacon King (Labor/TPP)
[2] Maxwell/Dallasfan (D-Rs)
[1] Write in: Polnut/Cincinnatus (TPP)

Northeast Governor - Sawx automatically endorsed

Northeast Senator - MattVT automatically endorsed

Pacific Senator - Cranberry automatically endorsed

Southern Senator -
[1]  Write in: Hagrid
[2]  Write in: NC Yankee

Midwest Senator -
[1]  Write in: Dereich

Mideast Senator -
[1]  Write in: Spiral

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Aye

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I hereby call for the re-convening of the Convention to discuss recent developments and the direction of the Party.

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I don't consider the Civil Union a major threat or a problem, Simfan. A half-hearted attempt to hijack our party's ethos will fail, and fail spectacularly.

Nor do I. What I am worried about is the growth in The Party to an unprecedented size while more members of The Party, and senior members even, openly endorse candidates other than those endorsed by The Party or even their fellow members!

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The thing is that the latter is not something we saw in The Party at all until very recently. Perhaps broadly applying the democratic principle is in order, something like an executive committee?

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Either way, I do believe we ought to have an open endorsement vote concerning this Senate race.

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Ha!

Also I endorse Foucaulf for The People's Nomination. Adam doesn't even respect our grammatical customs.

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Should the by-laws be temporarily suspended and an open ballot for the Senate endorsement held?

[  ] Yes
[X] No

When is the election? Depending on this it may be that neither DKrol nor Foucaulf would be eligible for automatic endorsement or it might be that they both would be. Either way, it would mean a primary is necessary. Regardless, I support one.

It might be worth amending the by-laws to allow that if a certain percentage of The Party petitions to hold a vote on an otherwise automatically endorsed candidate that such a vote would be held. The sort of farce we saw with JCL imposing himself as the Federalist candidate for President (and perhaps sealing their fate) despite a plurality of the party having voted against endorsing his candidacy must at all costs not be allowed to repeat itself in our Party.

If we want party unity the best way to ensure this is by allowing all voices to be heard before making a choice one way or another; you can even call it democratic centralism if you want! I will say this now, I pledge to vote for whoever The Party votes to nominate in this race, regardless of my own preferences, provided that we hold a vote. I would even vote for Adam Griffin, who kindly took the time to insult me in his speech as some ancillary antagonist whose presence ended got in the way of his personal alliance "with The People" (despite the fact I joined the first incarnation of The Party the day after it was founded and registered in the second before it was even re-formed, which "coincidentally" happened the day I returned), if The Party voted to endorse him. I simply ask that we hold a vote first.

EDIT: As we now have two members of The Party seeking nomination, the bylaws mandate that a vote on the nomination be held, so this vote is moot and I am changing my vote on principle, since it is true that we should not just be deviating from our bylaws whenever.

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Dkrolga
The People's Party
Massachusetts

(Just changing party, not state or region)

He joined 8 days ago, but it depends on when the election actually is. The funny thing is, Bacon King has not actually resigned yet, meaning that all these candidates are running for an election that as of now is not scheduled to take place nor has to take place. The real question is, I suppose, when does Bacon King resign and how long after that would the election be held? To the Constitution!

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And Windjammer (what are you doing in here? ) got to the Constitution before I did! I'm not entirely sure how to interpret that clause, however. Does it mean that Homely has 7 days following the creation of a vacancy to call an election, which must take place no more than 10 days after the election has been called or Homely has 7 days following the creation of a vacancy to call an election, which must take place no more than 10 days after the vacancy has been created?

The latter seems like what the text suggests but it would imply that it would be perfectly possible to call for an election that would take place, say, the next day, if the schedule worked out like that. It also depends on when BK resigns.

But it's all moot since the relevant bit of our bylaws state that "Members of The Party for at least two weeks prior to the start of the convention will automatically receive The People's Endorsement." Now, regardless of whether you want to consider this convention to have been "started" when it was reconvened on 2 March, or "started" when it was originally called into session on 6 February, neither candidate qualifies for automatic endorsement. So this vote on whether to "suspend the bylaws" seems superfluous to me.

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Hold on SimFan. We (Federalists) don't have a provision for an open primary when it comes to the Presidential elections unlike what we do for At-Large Senate races. So my legitimacy was not a farce. Maxwell wasn't a member of the party at the time so he had no right to contest when we had a candidate. Had he joined before the election I do acknowledge he would've gotten the nod and I would've stepped aside (cause he wouldn't accept a conservative VP) but he didn't. He still got half my rightful base in addition to his DR base.

My point was that more people voted to endorse Maxwell than they did for you. Regardless of Federalist party rules, you were able to impose your candidacy despite the clear opposition of the majority of the party members who expressed a preference by voting on whom to endorse, even if the vote was not valid. The particulars of your case are not relevant here, its the fact that it could take place at all that is.

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I agree with Duke in principle, we should not really be suspending The People's Bylaws whenever we are so inclined, but the fact is that I believe the Bylaws as they currently stand allow for the possibility of a situation where we are compelled to nominate a candidate in complete disregard to the wishes of the members of The Party. This is why I believe it probably would be worthwhile to amend the bylaws as I mentioned earlier:

It might be worth amending the by-laws to allow that if a certain percentage of The Party petitions to hold a vote on an otherwise automatically endorsed candidate that such a vote would be held. The sort of farce we saw with JCL imposing himself as the Federalist candidate for President (and perhaps sealing their fate) despite a plurality of the party having voted against endorsing his candidacy must at all costs not be allowed to repeat itself in our Party.

(again, JCL, it isn't really about you but the context of what happened)

That being said since we now have two members of The Party running in this race under the bylaws we would have to hold a vote anyway, so this vote is indeed moot, and with that in mind I'm changing my vote on principle.

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Also I would like to echo the point made by Duke and Averroes, among others, that I find the fact that Labor is seeking to poach a seat held by their partner in the last election, without whose support they could not have won*, to be distasteful and something that should have been disavowed by Labor as a condition of our endorsement of a unity ticket. (I don't hold this against anyone, however, as it is of course something thought of in hindsight, something they did not have...)

*This is a fact, and I have done the work to prove it, which I can share if so requested.

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What happens if someone only wins a plurality of the vote?

EDIT: Or duh, it's probably run-off voting.

I don't know, looking at the present section it answers some concerns but raises other questions:

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On one hand, it is already possible for a "motion by three members" to trigger a "vote shall be held on whether to un-endorse any Person candidate named in the motion who is running in the upcoming election", although that's a bit different from what I had in mind. However there does not seem to be anything technically pertaining to an intra-Party primary besides this:

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Which, since it says only one candidate may be endorsed if there is a member of The Party running, so that would imply we have to hold a primary. I mean, I know we've obviously held primaries in the past, but the rooting for them in the bylaws seems unclear.

The main question I suppose have now is, in the case of a "primary", do we have to allow out-of-party candidacies?

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Also I would like to echo the point made by Duke and Averroes, among others, that I find the fact that Labor is seeking to poach a seat held by their partner in the last election, without whose support they could not have won*, to be distasteful and something that should have been disavowed by Labor as a condition of our endorsement of a unity ticket. (I don't hold this against anyone, however, as it is of course something thought of in hindsight, something they did not have...)

I've remained silent about this until now, but you're forcing my hand. The only conditions of the unity ticket in regards to Senate seats that was requested was 1) TPP requesting BK be on the ticket and 2) we asked that the NE Senate seat not be contested by TPP (as it, too, was being vacated by a member of the ticket); in exchange, we'd have our unity ticket and we wouldn't contest the Governorship. Despite the fact that it was not upheld, we did not complain like you are doing now, nor buck on our other agreements...

Just to clarify: I don't bring this up to be petty or anything. It's just that there is continued public complaining here about a hypothetical and something that was not asked or requested, whereas we did not do so when an explicitly-requested and effectively agreed-upon arrangement was essentially tossed out the window. In addition, I found it quite disturbing that someone as qualified as Talleyrand - who is in many respect a Person himself - was scoffed at in such a way.

I was wholly unaware of such an agreement, one to which I was clearly not privy. If this is indeed the case then the point made about bad faith is not quite applicable to you, nor could you reasonably be said to be engaging in pettiness...  hopefully someone involved in these negotiations will clarify the situation for us all.

While the party bureaucracy processes my dues and forms, I'll comment that everyone has come to a consensus very quickly. By the end of the day, The Party should just proceed to a vote on whether DKrol or I would receive endorsement, with a run-off option. If members really want to, they can write-in Adam and The Party can deal with rule complications if he somehow wins.

Every hour spent arguing over minutiae is an hour we cede to Labour in organizing voters. And we only have 271 hours to spare!

I agree entirely.

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[ ] DKrol
[ x ] Foucaulf

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Now let us support Foucaulf to the last man. As a united Party.

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Now let us support Foucaulf to the last man. As a united Party.

Let's not!

You aren't one of us.