Bylaws Proposal: Allow expulsion of party members
Again, thanks to Dan Karlan:
Several affiliates have expulsion provisions, but even if a person is expelled by one of those affiliates from membership in the affiliate, he is still a member of the National Party. This proposal would dictate that National (LNC and staff) would honor the affiliate’s decision and remove such a member from the National Party rolls, too.
Several affiliates have expulsion provisions, but even if a person is expelled by one of those affiliates from membership in the affiliate, he is still a member of the National Party. This proposal would dictate that National (LNC and staff) would honor the affiliate’s decision and remove such a member from the National Party rolls, too.
posted by genushaha at 11:23 PM
7 Comments:
What about local affiliates? I was actually thinking about this recently, because the LP group at Colorado State University (which is an officially recognized affiliate of the Libertarian Party of Colorado) recently had to amend its constitution to include a clause allowing expulsion of members at the behest of the university. (Personally, I thought this was a silly idea, and lodged a Ron Paul protest vote against it. The amendment passed anyway. :)
So what if the following happens. Say the 2008 national convention is held in Denver; a student from North Carolina, active in the LP there, comes to CSU and becomes part of the campus group, but is expelled from membership for working to support a Republican against a Libertarian candidate in a local race. Say this student really wanted to be a delegate to the '08 convention in Denver, and managed to get the North Carolina affiliate to seat him as a delegate, because they weren't going to fill their quota of delegates.
He shows up at the '08 convention in Denver... what then? The LP-Colorado has no provision for expelling members, but the LPCSU did... but he was seated with the North Carolina delegation. Or: What if he had been seated with the Colorado delegation?
I don't know if I support this.
I'd understand a state wanting to have this right... for example, in Georgia now being a member of national doesn't make you a member of the Georgia LP...
But it'd seem to me that national should be able to kick members out of national, and the state can keep them, or visa versa. But just because the Libertarian Party of Wahoo State decides that John Doe is a jerk so they kick him out, that's grounds for being kicked out of national too?
Seth, I don't know that your scenario would be affected by this since you don't have to be a member to be selected by a state as a delegate.
But your scenario does reveal why I oppose this proposal. Once expulsion is approved as an institution, it could easily be abused. Right now, some state parties see it as a last ditch extreme option in only the rarest of cases, and for a damn good reason. To give even tacit approval of the practice in the national bylaws would, I'm afraid, encourage some to invoke expulsion just to further party infighting.
Local affiliates have always been able to write their own membership rules. For example, several states do not use the membership pledge as a condition for membership.Some states never joined UMP, and had independent lists of members.
Not only could an expulsion procedure be abused, it WILL be abused.
For two and half decades I have volunteered my heart out for the LP. There have, however, been at least two occassions where Johnny-come-lately type individuals came in, decided I was standing in their way, and made inquiries about how to get me expelled.
One of them had built up such a large support base on the state committee that if the expulsion proposal had been in force during "their time", I would now be banned from the LP.
Thankfully, those folks tended to chase away all of their own adherents and now they mostly keep to themselves.
Even so, if they saw an opening to regain control, they would rise back up out of the slime.
This proposal to expel a member of the national LP simply because a half-dozen people on a state committee happen not to like him is a reprehensible idea.
There perhaps should be an expulsion procedure; however, it should be based on someone being involved in force or fraud on the national LP only.
A loser is someone who badmouths someone else but refuses to put his own name to his derogatory comments.
I don't claim to either support or oppose Sean Haugh. I don't even know him. But I do know that people like Anonymous are bad for the libertarian movement, because they can't control themselves from making ad hominem attacks on others.
If you want to attack what Sean says or writes, do so factually. But your ad hominem attacks against him do nothing to convince me that you're right about him. To the contrary, they convince me that he's probably a pretty good guy by comparison to you.
I normally delete Bill's "anonymous" posts, but I haven't been checking lately and liked libertarian TV's reply. Let's just say it is obvious that Bill has far more on his agenda than any rational analysis of my record.
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