In March, Nathalie Paravicini and Seth Woolley were politely invited to a Linn-Benton chapter meeting. The chapter wanted to know why all its members had been “decredentialed” in the February 25 convention voting. They were told it had been a “tit for tat” for past grievances. That “drastic” action was necessary to keep chapter member Lori Burton off the State Coordinating Committee.
Months later, Paravicini still admitted the vote tampering was “incorrect.” That’s enough to nullify it, and should have stopped the state from interfering to back it instead. Only the Democrat-run Secretary of State’s office and Woolley’s “election committee” still pretend throwing out 39 of 75 ballots was legitimate. It was not, and Nathalie knows it, hence the victim routine.
What happened “last January”
So, what’s Paravicini in such a snit about, that justifies massive cheating in a party officer election? She’s talking about the January 2023 convention. That convention also had an SCC election, which wasn’t disputed. The problem, according to Paravicini and Woolley, was that Woolley didn’t get to vote on a set of resolutions that were also on the ballot.
How vitally important are convention resolutions? Not particularly. They don’t affect our platform, aren’t mentioned in our bylaws, and are effectlvely just a publicity statement. Like a resolution from Congress that creates no law or binding policy.
Why Seth “didn’t get to vote”
Seth had apparently been told by Nathalie that he could vote absentee on the resolutions. Nathalie was wrong. Absentee voting is plainly allowed in our bylaws (Article VII) for three types of votes, and resolutions are not among them.
There is no requirement to use absentee voting in any case. Convention rules are set by a majority of supporting members present, again by Article VIII. The majority present in January 2023 didn’t decide to use it for the resolutions, though it did for the SCC election.
The resolutions passed, most by a wide margin. A resolution supporting the GPUS Black Caucus position on covid vaccine mandates passed by a narrower margin. Just a resolution, and a position already well established within the Green Party. But even as late as 2023, that set off a frenzy of ideological warfare.
The power grab begins
Nathalie and her allies on the SCC could not handle the resolutions passing, so they threw them out. How? By declaring the votes invalid. But the SCC has no such power; convention votes have the standing of “party decisions.” The SCC is not in a position to ratify or overrule a convention vote. While the resolution may not have been that big a deal, the SCC trying to overrule it was. It directly violated our party’s most fundamental rules of order. It was an attack on grassroots democracy.
So the next convention, in March 2023, voted overwhelmingly to affirm the January convention decision. Guess what happened next? Sure enough, Nathalie, Justin Filip and their friends promptly produced another SCC decree that the whole thing was invalid. By now, they were relying on the SCC responsibility to make “binding interpretations” of party documents. But interpretation can never mean reading what isn’t there. At this point, they had already de facto declared themselves above the membership.
September: the revenge begins
Lori Burton had been facilitator for both the January and March 2023 conventions. She had been doing the job for the previous year or so already, for only $100 a meeting. She has more than 20 years of experience in running PGP meetings. She’s one of the party’s only active experts in consensus-seeking process, and she knows our bylaws. She made sure that convention attendees were able to control the process, even in March when Nathalie did everything she could to derail it. Nathalie has treated her as an enemy since then.
For the September 2023 convention, Nathalie declared Lori “fired,” and instead hired a self-promoted professional facilitator for $2700. The proposed agenda focused on sweeping bylaws reforms, but instead got bogged down. First, the new facilitator spent about an hour trying to get attendees used to a new white board, before finally giving up. Next there was a long haggle over the minutes of the previous conventions. Nathalie insisted on adding text to those minutes implying that conducting a non-absentee vote on resolutions was unusual. Nothing else significant happened at the September convention.
February 2024: The New Normal
Rather than hire another expensive outside facilitator, Nathalie and her allies switched to a webinar format for the next convention. This was another SCC election, though it was held a month late, as they are supposed to be in January or December. In webinars, members can’t decide proceedings. They can’t make motions or have discussions. They can’t even see or talk to each other. The breach of our rules of order was complete before the votes were even cast.
And despite that, or perhaps because of it, Nathalie and her faction lost the vote, and resorted to cheating.
Again, the admission that the tampered vote was wrong is enough. The excuses mean nothing, and insult the Linn-Benton chapter and everyone else whose votes were thrown out. More than half the ballots were purged! Nathalie is not going to live this down. Even if she holds the party in an iron grip for the next 10 years, who will believe it’s real democracy? She should tell the truth. She should inform the Secretary of State that the information given them by Seth and Justin is false. Tell them the March 3 OpaVote result is the binding party decision.