.
Our electoral process is by popular vote so PCP delegates do not act as a voting committee for candidates. The most important roles of a PCP state delegate are to oversee their state chapter and bring those concerns forward to the national chapter.
For organizational voting there will be a timeframe to float issues out to the state chapters (the public basically) to let them form a collective opinion. In fact we encourage multiple opinions sprung from enlightened debate. Ultimately each state's delegate will bring those points of view (all points of view, RESPECTFULLY) to a delegates' conference.
Having 50 delegates in a meeting is complicated but it's a way to address all states' concerns at the same time.
We expect to start with virtual meeting of course. Eventually we may have respectable headquarters and fly everyone in for regular conferences, but those days are well into the future. Virtual is good for now.
Initial ideas for "PCP delegates" and their roles/responsibilities:
- Oversee their state chapter, keeping tally of their opinions
- Interface with the national chapter, to relay their state's overall opinions
- Interface with local citizens, to relay new issues or dynamics to be sorted
- Represent differing points of view, within reason
It is suggested that we hold delegates to the same level of accountability as candidates:
- Honesty and integrity
- Uphold PCP proposed policies
- Manage the bulk of their own affairs
The logic behind having delegates largely manage their own affairs is that they know their citizenry best. We will offer some structural support and guidance, and possibly (in the future) a token stipend. That means our delegates are not beholden to us for some big payday, but because our values align.
When (and how) is it appropriate to select delegates?
As the organization has just opened and has less than 1,000 members, we do not yet have any state chapters or delegates. (The day's still young though!)
We have a section for State Chapters of PCP, each with a subforum for delegate campaigns. When the organization reaches a threshold determined by popular vote of the members we will use a democratic process to move forward to establish an acceptable order of procedure.
COMMENT QUESTIONS:
We can go wayyyy off into the weeds and ask...
...Should each state have only one delegate?
...Should states get more delegates according to population?
...Does this happen at some point (if we get as big as the two majors now) or never?
.