Sunday, February 13, 2005
No Confidence Resolution Endorsed By Green Party of Humboldt County, CA
The No Confidence Resolution was endorsed yesterday by the Green Party of Humboldt County, CA. The Greens' quarterly General Assembly convened in Garberville, CA for a day of mostly internal housekeeping matters - by-law amendments, endorsements, and committee membership elections. However, we also spent well over 30 minutes discussing No Confidence, ultimately leading to a few minor edits and the adoption of what is now Version 5.2 of the No Confidence Resolution.
While the Green Party platform has favored abolishing corporate personhood, one of yesterday's sticking points was the resolution's references to corporations. To achieve consensus for the endorsement, the word "corporate" was removed from the first WHEREAS clause, maintaining the spirit of opposing all private ownership of voting processes.
Still further discussion focused on whether it was appropriate to include any language that even vaguely supported continued use of voting machines. As a result, the first RESOLVE clause was changed to read: "all election processes are owned and operated in the public domain";
This concern was also addressed by a slight modification of the third WHEREAS clause, striking the phrase "mechanism for" (leaving it to read: "any future voting"), and replacing "audit trail" with "paper ballot";
The final minor edit led to insertion of the word "locally" in the fifth RESOLVE clause, expanding the accountability of requiring vote counting to be done publicly in front of citizen and media witnesses.
Readers interested in comparing versions of the resolution can trace the entire history of its evolution in this section of the GuvWurld News Archive.
Next steps with the Greens include: outreach to the party on the state level, lobbying the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, and sending party members back to their other community groups to win additional support for lobbying at the City Council level wherever possible (some places, such as Garberville, are unincorporated and have no Council). It may also be a plus that the Arcata City Council, which has already agreed to consider the resolution, has three Green members (a majority of the seats).
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While the Green Party platform has favored abolishing corporate personhood, one of yesterday's sticking points was the resolution's references to corporations. To achieve consensus for the endorsement, the word "corporate" was removed from the first WHEREAS clause, maintaining the spirit of opposing all private ownership of voting processes.
Still further discussion focused on whether it was appropriate to include any language that even vaguely supported continued use of voting machines. As a result, the first RESOLVE clause was changed to read: "all election processes are owned and operated in the public domain";
This concern was also addressed by a slight modification of the third WHEREAS clause, striking the phrase "mechanism for" (leaving it to read: "any future voting"), and replacing "audit trail" with "paper ballot";
The final minor edit led to insertion of the word "locally" in the fifth RESOLVE clause, expanding the accountability of requiring vote counting to be done publicly in front of citizen and media witnesses.
Readers interested in comparing versions of the resolution can trace the entire history of its evolution in this section of the GuvWurld News Archive.
Next steps with the Greens include: outreach to the party on the state level, lobbying the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, and sending party members back to their other community groups to win additional support for lobbying at the City Council level wherever possible (some places, such as Garberville, are unincorporated and have no Council). It may also be a plus that the Arcata City Council, which has already agreed to consider the resolution, has three Green members (a majority of the seats).
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