In the last few weeks, the Boston Tea Party wrapped up its 2010 convention with a run-off election because a couple of candidates vying for the National Committee's At-Large member spot officially lost their race to the party membership's choice of NOTA.

Shortly after the closing of the convention, when the At-Large election ended, the candidate with the lowest number of votes -- that being Neil Kiernan Stephenson who had an approval vote average of 8-6 (57%) -- lost his bid for re-election to the At-Large wing of the National Committee. Two well-established Venus Project members who went by the names of Rion Ametu and Matthew Wagner (whose names of whom neither former BTP chairman Doug Gaking nor I heard) respectively accumulated both 67% of the approval vote (8-5 votes) for the National Committee, resulting in a tie. The details for that can be found here.

The run-off election that was held afterward featured three choices on the approval ballot on this site: Rion Ametu, Matthew Wagner, and NOTA. After being held for a consecutive day, the poll resulted in NOTA winning 58% of the vote (7 votes), beating Matthew Wagner's 42% (5 votes) and Rion's 0 votes (0%). The results for that can be found here.

From that point on, the fourth At-Large seat was unfilled. While the large majority of the Party membership did not vote during the Convention and the vote turn-out during that entire week was dismal at best, this led to an abysmally low voter turn-out at the run-off election poll. Not only that, much to Neil Kiernan Stephenson's chagrin, the vast majority of the BTP membership did not even remotely consider filling the seat because of the lack of political interest. That is, until the Party's founder Tom Knapp intervened with his objections with the run-off results by appealing to the election.

Tom objected to the run-off election on several grounds:

• The bylaws mandate that the National Committee members be members of the Party. Why? His reasoning is that the option for None of the Above (NOTA) on the ballot for At-Large and on the run-off election ballots does not qualify as a member of the Party.
• The bylaws mandate that the candidates running for the At-Large positions on the National Committee must be nominated, seconded, and accept the nominations for those bids. Under Tom's uncanny reasoning, NOTA was not nominated, seconded, and did not accept the nomination for the spot.

and finally,

• National Committee members, working with the tools they had in their possession, did the best they could to carry out the elections. After all, the bylaws mandate that "an election of at-large national committee members" must be underway.

Let's deal with these objections on a point-by-point basis, beginning with my first objection to the first one.

Tom says that the option for None of the Above (NOTA) is ineligible as a candidate for the At-Large position because it isn't a valid choice, as it is NOT a member of the Party. After all, only party members are eligible for running for those seats. NOTA is excluded, as he wants us to think and believe.

Well, I can honestly object to his appeal on that ground for a few good reasons, but let's start with the first one. For one thing, when he penned the original bylaws upon forming the Boston Tea Party, Tom included this section in Article 8: Officers, section c of the Party's bylaws, which he neglects to mention in his post:

c) Prior to the beginning of the Party's organizational convention, and during the first 90 days of the year of each subsequent regular national convention, notice of elections to these offices shall be published on the Party's web site and nominations shall be opened, to be made through the appended comments form. All candidates who are nominated by two or more members of the Party, and who accept the nomination (also through the comments form) prior to the opening of the convention shall be listed on a poll on the Party's web site as soon as practicable after the opening of the convention, with one poll for each office to be filled. This poll shall include the option "None of the Above" (hereinafter referred to as "NOTA"). [Emphasis added.] This poll shall run in 24-hour cycles. At the end of each cycle, if any candidate has polled a majority of voting members, he or she shall be declared the winner of the office. If no candidate has achieved a majority, and if NOTA has likewise not achieved a majority, the poll will be renewed with the candidate receiving the fewest votes on the previous iteration removed. [Emphasis added.]

Then Tom also incorporated this provision under Article 9: National Committee:

c) Prior to the beginning of the Party's organizational convention, and on January 1st of the year of each subsequent regular convention, notice of the election of at-large National Committee members shall be published on the Party's web site and nominations shall be opened, to be made through the appended comments form. All candidates who are nominated by two or more members of the Party, and who accept nomination (also through the comments form) prior to the opening of the convention shall be listed on a poll on the Party's web site. The poll shall remain open throughout the convention and end with the convention's adjournment. The method of election shall be "approval voting" -- each voting Party member may cast votes for all nominees whom he or she deems acceptable, and the four nominees who poll the largest number of total votes shall be elected. In the event of a tie, all nominees to whom the tie is applicable shall submit to a random selection process chosen and administered by the chair, with the Vice Chair and Secretary attesting to the fairness and honesty of results of said process.

Notice anything interesting in these two provisions in both articles? NOTA is allowed for National Officers, but NOT for the At-Large officers. In other words, NOTA qualifies in a run-off election for either Secretary, Vice Chair, or Chair, but if it's an election that involves At-Large seats, sorry, that option doesn't and shouldn't apply. NOTA can be nominated, seconded, and can accept the nomination under Article 8, but strangely enough it can't do so under Article 9.

In other words, Tom wants his cake and eat it too. It doesn't bother him or faze him that NOTA is legitimate for the Officers portion, but it's not when we're dealing with the National Committee. After all, this is illogical, nonsensical, unfair, and a clusterfuck, given that the Chair, the Vice Chair, and the Secretary ARE part of the National Committee as well.

To make my point, Tom is responsible for screwing up the bylaws. He's at fault for incorporating an unfair electoral system, because it forces voting delegates at Conventions and party voters in run-off and special elections to choose candidates that the voting block don't want because they are not worthy of the offices for which they are running and given that NOTA should either apply to ALL offices of the National Committee or it shouldn't apply at all. But if Tom is going to make a half-assed, lame argument that NOTA does NOT apply to National Committee members serving as At-Large representatives, then it stands to reason that the same argument should apply to National Officers such as the Chair, the Vice Chair, and the Secretary.

Now Tom would argue that the membership in 2006 could have modified the bylaws before passing them. That's true. The membership, including me, at the time could have done that. But none of us noticed that inconsistency in the bylaws at the time, not until when it became an issue after this year's Convention. How were the members supposed to know in foresight that this was going to be a problem? What, do they have a crystal ball? Are they psychic? Of course not! If anything, Tom could have warned the membership about the inconsistency at the time this was going on in 2006, but he chose not to. That's on Tom, not the membership. Tom, if you are reading this, OWN it! Take responsibility for this and concede that you could have avoided this problem by either not including NOTA for all offices or including it for all of them. Saying that one half of the offices can have NOTA and the other half can do without it is seriously and terribly unfair and insane as far as I'm concerned.

Here's my objection to his second point.

Tom says that NOTA is NOT valid for At-Large members of the National Committee of the BTP because they were not nominated, seconded, and it did not accept the nomination for this election, as stated in the bylaws. Well, the bylaws may say that, and that may be the ruling policy of the Party, but that bylaws mandating that is unfair. As a matter of fact, that should be amended in the 2012 BTP Convention via the Bylaws Committee. (I plan to head that Committee then, and I intend to offer a bylaws change that will incorporate NOTA for all offices. People can also offer a bylaws amendment that removes NOTA altogether and force the members to accept candidates for all those positions, whether they are truly qualified for and worthy of those seats.)

Plus, Tom's argument outside the bylaws is simply ridiculous. According to its very own bylaws, the Libertarian Party allows party delegates and voters to choose NOTA if they object to and reject candidates running for President, Vice President, Party Offices, and all At-Large offices. Why should that equal choice NOT be valid for At-Large? Why should we be denied that choice? The LP does it. Why can't we? Does Tom really want to force the membership to accept a candidate JUST for the sake of accepting a candidate in order to fill an unfilled office? What if the Candidates for At-Large who lost in the run-off had a run-off election without NOTA? What if one of them won? Do we really want a Venus Project member whose ideas are vastly in stark opposition to the Party's platform? Do we really want that for our Party?

I don't object to Tom's third point, as he is right about the NatComm handling the election. I agree with him on this. On the first two, I don't. It is what it is.

Finally, we come to my point as to whether or not this is the Tom Knapp Party or the Boston Tea Party. Tom has been a big disappointment in the Party, given that he's had a tight leash on how this Party has been running. There were times when he was right and times when he was wrong. In this case, he was in the wrong for advocating this appeal. While it is his right to appeal to the run-off results, I don't agree with his reasoning behind it. He's right that the bylaws say these things, but he deliberately set up the bylaws this way, which has resulted in this controversy over the At-large seat.

If Tom objects to this, he could have helped us out during the Convention week when we needed him. No, he decided to focus his efforts on the Libertarian Party's National Convention in St. Louis. On the eve of the National Convention, he told me, Doug Gaking, and Jim Davidson in a private chat that, after the LP convention, he was making that his last hurrah. That turned out to be a really big joke, now didn't it?

I know he's left the Party a couple of times in the past because he didn't want the Party to be labeled with his name on it, as if it's all about him. But he has made it all about him in a way. What the membership needs to understand is that this Party is more than about him. It's about the members in it.

Tom was even willing to go so far as to dissolve the Party. Over what? Because the appeal poll initially failed to win? Because it didn't please him that the appeal went the way he wanted it to? He complained that the national committee decided NOT to remedy the ordeal and that the membership is wrong to decline to force the Committee's hand into solving the "problem." Well, the interest in the seat was NOT a high priority on the members' list. If it were, doesn't Tom think that many contenders would have gone after that seat immediately and the National Committee would have gladly moved and seconded a new election?

Interestingly enough, there's a current election going on at this moment. This is because our chairman Darryl W. Perry moved to open nominations for the seat, and I seconded it to resolve the matter without any pending further conflicts. That was after Darryl illegally removed his vote AFTER the run-off poll closed, which was in stark violation of the BTP bylaws, and he was excoriated by former BTP Chairman and Site Adminisrator Doug Gaking over that fiasco. (He later apologized, which is why he moved to open nominations to correct his mistake.) Tom, oddly enough, was silent on the matter at that point. But what does it matter? Tom got what he wanted, and a new election will end later at 3 p.m. EST. (If he did remark on it later, then I must have missed it because he didn't blog about it on here or on KN@PPSTER, or even post it in one of the remaining forum and blog post comments.

Now the election is at 60 votes. Neil may or may not win the electon that ends later today. If he wins, this will be on Tom, and the fault will lie on him for pushing this. He has basically said some unkind things about Mike Shanklin, the current At-Large candidate, and I know Mike very well. It has seemed to me that Tom would rather have Neil on the Committee than no one at all. I won't mind if Doug wins, but I will be more than thrilled if Mike wins. The way Tom has been talking, he sounded like he was just siding with Neil JUST for the sake of siding with him, not to mention that he agrees with Neil on the National Initiative for Democracy (NI4D) petition that those two were peddling a couple of years ago.

Regardless of how the election unfolds, the voters will have to decide: do they want Neil to win or do they want either Doug or Mike to win?

But more importantly, do they want this Party to be the Tom Knapp Party or the Boston Tea Party?

I hope they make the right choice. I really do.