— by David Turnoy —
The San Juan County Democratic Party had its biennial reorganization meeting on Saturday, January 14, in Friday Harbor. Many of our Precinct Committee Officers (PCOs) had been elected in the primary last August, and they were on the hotseat to elect new officers for the local party. David Dehlendorf of San Juan Island had served as chair for the past three years, and he did an excellent job building up the number of participants in our local party. I ran for the chair position unopposed, and not unsurprisingly I was elected (David Turnoy of Orcas Island). My main reason for running is to try to improve the world we are leaving to our children and grandchildren, which requires a more progressive path for the Democrats.
It is clear that the time has come for a new direction in the Democratic Party. Many people no longer see us as the party of the people, which is what we aim to be. It is clear from the caucuses last year that our locals who consider themselves Democrats and came out to participate also favor a more progressive direction. To that end we elected two very progressive younger people, Learner Limbach and Natasha Frey, for the positions of state committee man and woman. These two, along with their counterparts from all around the state, will be meeting in Olympia at the end of the month, and they will have the chance to elect a more progressive state chair, Tina Podlodowski, who recently ran for Secretary of State.
Change is in the air, and if you want to be part of a more progressive Democratic Party, I urge you to get involved. We are planning issue-related action teams at the next meeting, which will be in Friday Harbor on February 4. We had begun this process at a special meeting in December, and we will conclude the planning stage at the next meeting and get busy doing concrete actions to improve the political process.
For instance, we are working on a plan to end the Electoral College, and there is a method to do so without needing a constitutional amendment. We are also looking to take back the state senate, which we can do by helping the candidate in a special election later this year; if we are successful, both houses will have Democratic majorities, and we can actually pass progressive legislation. And, brace yourselves now, we might even be able to fully fund our schools. If you are interested in being part of the change we need, contact me either at 376-4165 or davidgeri@centurylink.net.
Congratulations, David, and others. I am sure you and others will work hard to make the Democratic Party of which I have been a member since I registered to vote in Pennsylvania at age 18 (I am 63 now) more effective at the local and state levels where it has been recognized it is necessary to make changes in order to regain influence on national issues.
I have been a registered Democratic voter in PA, NY, OH, NC, CA and WA and this is the first time that I have had experience with the caucus. While I understand that participation in the caucus is satisfying to more motivated, outgoing voters, I am not convinced it is sufficiently inclusive and would like to see the Democratic primary considered for choosing the Democratic candidate for President from WA. I have done volunteer work with a number of groups on the island and know that some folks who want to participate will never go to a caucus, many of them seniors, and it also seems to be a very unfair system for those who have other commitments at the same time as the caucus. In short, it just does not seem to be a very “Democratic” approach, especially for a party that wants and needs to widen its participation.
Best of luck in your ongoing endeavors.
Hi Lois,
You raise an issue about which many others share your concern. In fact, our county organization submitted a proposal to the state Democrats to change the order of things: First have a primary where we all vote to establish the number of delegates each presidential candidate gets, then have a caucus for those interested in running for delegate to attend. This brings us the best of both worlds, voting by mail but having a local conversation to elect delegates. The state party agrees that we must do something of this sort, and later this year their Rules Committee will be enacting something like this. Hopefully our new state committee woman and man will be able to participate in this matter.
Thanks for your interest,
David
So, David, you state that Progressive Democrats “…are working on a plan to end the Electoral College.”
What are you trying to say? Is it that because the Progressive Democrats’ candidate didn’t win this time, they want to change the rules to make sure that their candidate wins next time?
What a very short-sighted goal it is, that Progressive Democrats have set for themselves.
The Founders wisely gave us the Electoral College, rather than a direct popular presidential election, for a very specific reason.
That reason is to prevent the “tyranny of the majority.” Our political system was designed to permit the minority opinion to be heard, and minority needs to be included in important decisions.
If Progressive Democrats are successful in eliminating the Electoral College, that act may soon turn around and bite all of them in the nether regions: The political revolt that brought us Donald Trump may grow, and then the Progressive Democrats may find themselves in the minority.
What’ll they do then?
Thank you Steve; you beat me to it, and put it better than I could have. (This could all be a part of the Change I’ve been hoping for. We’ll see.)
While we are talking about changing to a primary system for elections, how about this? No “early primaries.” One vote, one person, one date for all state primaries. Paper ballots; counted by real people, with non-partisan, independent oversight. No electronic voting – period. Overturn Citizens United – for starters.
I’m excited to see the youth and younger adults galvanizing and becoming active. Congratulations to Learner and Natasha; I’m sure you will serve the party well. It’s not my party, but I can agree with it needing more progressive values and enacting them because that was, and still is, the will of the people
Saying that a tiny minority should override the wishes of a majority is about as trustworthy as saying that a handful of one percenters should rule the 99%. A handful of swing states deciding an election and having undue importance in an election is undemocratic. Money buys these states, plain and simple. The candidates court these states heavily, spending most of their monies in these states. The ones with the most money behind them win. Letting 4 to 6 states decide an election, won handily by the other candidate in the popular vote: somehow, I don’t think this is what the Founders envisioned by having an electoral college. This never would have happened in the Founders’ day; or would it? Or perhaps obscene amounts of money has always bought political favor with corrupt candidates lying to the people. It would seem this has mostly been so.
I did not vote for either of these two corporate-party robber-baron cronyism shills. But I had the luxury of doing this because my state did not even count in deciding who won the presidency; it wasn’t a ‘swing’ state. if I lived in a swing state, I might have made a different decision than I did.
This election was a sham and a disgrace. There was so much election fraud and voters purged and blocked from voting. That almost 3 million-vote lead by the ‘losing’ candidate would likely have been larger in the swing states where millions of voter registrations were purged, and where “provisional ballots” were a scam and never counted at all. The “tyranny of the majority” is a farce too – given the corruption.
I don’t know if the democratic party can be saved; it’s not my party, never was – and after the way the DNC has conducted itself in the primaries right up to today, it’s not likely to be my party. That said, the people who have stepped up as progressive democrats have my confidence and respect. If anyone can bring back more progressive values to the democratic party, maybe they can.
How Trump supporters can say, with a straight face and genuine belief, that he is “draining the swamp” by putting unqualified billionaire cronies in his cabinet who are the self-same bankers, oil barons, and speculative land grabbers that have been “draining the swamp” of anyone or anything in their way for centuries- is baffling, and borders on the surreal. I hope that when Trump supporters finally realize that they too have become victims, they will understand what is really transpiring. Maybe then we can have real dialogue.
To address Steve and Carl, I really don’t understand your comments at all. Two out of the last five elections have seen the winner of the popular vote lose out to a candidate getting many fewer votes. Our system is supposed to be based on one person one vote. But if you live in a small state like Wyoming or Alaska, your vote is worth much more than the vote of a person from California or New York. Why? Because of the way the Electoral College is designed. Each state has two senators, so each state gets at least two votes. Each state has at least one member of the House of Representatives, but the more of these you have, the more your vote is diluted.
Why did we get the Electoral College anyway? The argument we were taught in school was that communication and transportation were so slow 230 years ago that it made more sense to have the electors meet. But who were those electors? Generally the elites who were supposed to vote for a “serious” candidate in case the “rabble” voted for a non-serious candidate. Basically the aristocratic writers of the Constitution didn’t trust the people to make good decisions, so they built in a system that would give elitist electors a chance to correct the misinformed decision of the people. Tell me, did that work this year? Did the electors fix the mistake that the people had made, voting for a clownish but venom-spewing businessman with no political experience? Not at all, they went right along and voted for Trump. So the idea that electors would choose a serious candidate doesn’t wash. And the idea that we are supposed to be a democracy, yet we let a candidate who loses by almost 3 million votes become the president–you don’t see anything wrong with that?
When this country was founded, there were several million black slaves. They were not allowed to vote, yet southerners wanted these slaves to count when deciding how many Congressional representatives they would get and how many electoral votes. So this system was set up where the southerners could have their slaves count (3 votes for every 5 slaves). This is a system based on slavery. And you would have this continue to be the system used in what is supposedly the best democracy in the world?
A final argument against the Electoral College is that it encourages candidates to ignore most of the states and only campaign in the battleground states, the states where the vote will be close. In one recent election, half of all presidential campaign appearances were in two states, Ohio and Florida. Is that fair to the people in all the other states? If we truly had a one person one vote system, a vote is worth the same everywhere, and candidates would need to campaign everywhere.
It is long past time for the Electoral College to be eliminated. Normally one needs a constitutional amendment, which is a huge undertaking. But there is a way around this called the National Popular Vote Compact which our state legislature already approved a number of years ago. Google it and see how much better this plan would work.
David, thank you for the article. I am very happy for the opportunity to serve on the State Committee. Regarding the specific issues of the electoral college and caucus vs. primary, these are two issues among many that will be hotly debated over the next year. I look forward to participating in that process, bringing some of our ideas to the statewide conversation and helping keep my community in the loop as to what is being talked about by others across the state. I hope to see you all on February 4th in Friday Harbor!