RE: Election from February 2024 Convention
Members of the Linn-Benton Chapter of the Pacific Green Party are hereby filing a formal complaint at the improper handling of the election process for the February 24 through March 3, 2024 convention. The actions occurred during the week-long period of continued registration and voting for this convention, which ended midnight, March 3rd. During the week after the voting closed, no members were allowed to view the opavote results as final. We were told that Seth was rewriting the election parameters, which was not necessary, and was improper after the fact.
Some members of the Pacific Green Party SCC, party officers, and their ad hoc “elections committee” altered the final opavote result of midnight March 3rd. This was accomplished by discarding the entirety of the votes from supporting members in our longest standing and most active chapter, the Linn-Benton chapter. This action to disenfranchise our chapter’s voting members was supported by former SCC members who were brought in to vote it through along with officers of the party, who formed the “elections committee.” We are disputing the results that Seth released on March 8th on behalf of the “election committee.”
The opavote result from 75 ballots sent and cast by supporting members after a full week of the continuing convention (with open registration that week,) should be honored as binding. Seth’s altered election results should be set aside, as they are not legal or binding and were not accomplished under a transparent open process, as is our policy for elections. The ballots were supposed to be anonymous, and were not to be sent out unless a member was qualified to vote.
This is a complete departure from all of our previous processes and looks as if it was done in order for certain election results to be cast out, changed to suit the wishes of members of the SCC and officers. It is improper action and resulted in a reversal of the wishes of the convention, leading to 2 chapters being “decertified” and 2 duly elected members of the SCC to be “unelected.” This, along with a platform item of Seth’s to be “voted” through and other items not approved by the majority via opavote, allowed the non-democratic and non-consensus items to be forced upon the entire membership as a final decision.
The SCC members in charge of managing the election, convention, and “elections committee” had this full week to do their due diligence and fully certify any voters who they deemed to be lacking credentialing, as they have been responsible for doing each and every previous convention in our history. There was no mention, no communication of the credentialing issue to any member of our chapter during the week of open voting. Therefore there was no way for our members to know that something, if anything, needed to be done. It is the responsibility of the SCC, who run elections to see that it is done.
We can safely assume that all of our membership had their votes nullified by Seth, including Charles Newlin, Mike Beilstein, Lori Burton, and Blair Bobier who have served the party for years as supporting members in good standing. This cannot continue or it will break the party.
This complaint is to be brought forward to the next convention, in May of 2024 and members allowed to view it, discuss it, and make the final decision on SCC actions and voting results.
We stand in solidarity with the values of democracy, and we value all members input.
The Linn-Benton Chapter of the Pacific Green Party