I look forward to growing Old and Wise and Audacious.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

What to do, what to do? Who to vote for, Who to vote for?

Vancouver Island North has a mail in ballot, it arrived in mail boxes on Monday and Tuesday here in the southern end of the riding GOK's if everyone up at the northern reaches has theirs by now.

First off, I did not fill in a Form 6 as I have been to the 3 previous Leadership conventions and I am way to cynical & jaded besides it is time some of the locals who have worked in this riding get elected as delegates. I did sign up and renew several people before the July 4th deadline at that time thinking I might want to go in the end but wouldn't be able to if didn't get my own butt covered. As I've said before I know more than I ever wanted to know.

The Ballot has 117 names on it of which 32 live in the riding. Our riding list is around 133 The candidate delegate breakdown goes like this .

Volpe 14 ( from away) Kennedy 19 ( all his organisers from away)
MHF 2 ( from away) HF 1 ( poor soul) Dryden 13 ( 11 from away 2 locals) Rae 26 (22 from away 4 locals) Dion 18 (12 locals 6 from away) Ignatieff 21 (14 local 7 from away) Brison 1 (local) Undeclared 2 (local). You can see by these numbers that only Mi and Dion have worked this riding.

What I have learned this week is that not only has the LPCBC waived our ridings motion to not allow foreigners on our delegation lists , but that these slates are being run in multiple ridings.

Only in BC ?

I have spent much time on the telephone and in person explaining to my "vote" What to do! and who to vote for. they thought that it would be just a vote for me and I'm not on the ballot, this is a shock to new liberals who do not understand the slate system in a riding that has traditionally voted for delegates to represent them.The thing here is getting those ballots mailed before the Friday deadline and more importantly will they arrive at LPCBC HQ in time for the count on October 4th.

There has been absolutely no explaination of how they will let the membership know who actually gets elected to represent them in Montreal. It may be that only those elected will be informed.

Who knows?

4 comments:

S.K. said...

Wow that's a sad story. Out of riding delegates should not be allowed. Can they not be challenged on residency? I was told that scrutineers can challenge residency. Did your riding association not effectively do this with their vote. I think your executive can have those other names disqualified. Its worth a shot. Best of luck. This should not happen.

James Curran said...

Are these out of riding people allowed to vote in your riding? or is it just your 133 that vote? Far cry from my riding with 650 members, 62 running, all from in riding.

Lolly said...

Of the 133 members on the most recent VINFLA list I know of 4 who have not lived in the riding for the past year. If any one died in the meantime they are still on the list, because you & I both know that lists are always out of date as soon as they are updated.If the LPCBC or for that matter the Riding President had been sending out mail via Canada Post they would have known this.

My understanding is that you have to be a member of the riding to vote. I can only hope that the LPCBC HQ understand this. ( Now that is cynical).

Bear in mind that this is a mail in ballot which was an arbitrary decision made with no explaination of what the rules are.There are 11 ridings receiving a mail in ballot or a partial mail in. The more I know the scarier it gets.

My past experience was with a simple slate, each candidate presented a slate with a total of allowed to be elected.
14
2 YF, 2YM, 4AF,4AM,1SF,1SM
Keep It Simple Sweetheart has gone out of fashion with Form 6's arriving at HQ and Campaign s everyone who wanted to run gets to run.

A strike for democracy right.

For some reason they have chosen to list the slates in alphabetical order which has made it extremely difficult for members to figure out what category each person is running for, not to mention they have no idea who most of these people are.

One very distraught couple called me to say all they did was vote for the Leader on the 1st page of the ballot because page 2 of the ballot was so poorly explained they couldn't even read the names as all the slates were crowded onto that page (with the instructions in both official languages.)

But wait ..........

Page 3 has a partial slate and the final Volpe slate of 14.

The whole thing SUCKS!

I took a copy of my ballot before I marked it so that I could use the copy to check who was on our membership list marking it as I went.

If they were using page 3 anyway why wouldn't they spread out the slates to fill out the 2 pages instead of crowding (101 names) on one and 16 on the next.

This process here in BC is the political process of total abuse and manipulation that shows no respect for the Liberal party.

Scrutineers! I hope you know what you are doing.

S.K. said...

Yes I am also concerned that a very long list of delegates to select from will confuse the elderly and New Candians especially. The PArty should have done something to simplify this and make it as easy to read and as clear as possible. I was also under the impression untill yesterday that people could only be a form 6 in one riding where they were actually living. So because I live in one riding and have a school residence in another I could have been a delegate in one or the other just like a member in one or the other. People should only be allowed to fill out one form 6. This is a complete abuse of process.