TITLE: Plan for How to Reconvene GRP State Committee in 2024

SPONSORS: David Spanagel and Jamie Guerin

VETTING COMMITTEES: AdCom, CDLC

FLOOR MANAGER: David Spanagel

CONTACT INFO FOR FLOOR MANAGER: [email protected] ; cell 978-837-8868

SHEPHERD: Mike Pascucci

SUMMARY: Since we cannot follow our usual practice of reconvening a new State Committee in 2024 by electing at least one State Committee member through the Massachusetts presidential primary ballot, this proposal outlines and authorizes the procedure to be followed instead.

BACKGROUND: For the first time since the merger of the Green and Rainbow parties in 2003, no GRP candidate managed to receive >3% of the vote in a statewide constitutional offices’ election in 2022. This means that we do not automatically have ballot status as we enter the presidential election year in 2024, and so the Secretary of the Commonwealth will not be printing Green Party ballots on which any prospective State Committee member could win a seat on the next State Committee via the process spelled out in bylaw 8.5.1:

8.5.1 Forty women and forty men shall be elected to four-year terms at the presidential primaries as described in Massachusetts General Laws. Their terms shall begin on the 30th day following their election and end four years later on the 30th day following the presidential primary to be held that year.

Ordinarily, it is that group of elected State Committee members who convene and conduct the spring quarterly meeting of the State Committee in each presidential election year, whose agenda is specified in bylaw 8.5.8:

8.5.8 In 2008 or in any year when the March [d]ate of the quadrennial presidential primary is changed, at the organizing state committee meeting as prescribed by state law MGL Chapter 52, Section 1, the only actions that may and must take place in the following order by the newly elected state committee representatives for the Green-Rainbow Party elected at that primary election, are to:

1. choose the current Secretary of the party as the Secretary of the party
2. choose the current Treasurer of the party as the Treasurer of the party
3. call the regular spring state committee meeting at which there will be an orientation for newly elected regional representatives and whatever other business that may be taken up
4. adjourn the meeting

Regional conventions ordinarily elect additional representatives to serve on State Committee, and their status as regular regional representatives is ordinarily taken up by the elected State Committee members as indicated in bylaw 8.5.7:

8.5.7 The first act at any regular state committee meeting shall be to appoint any and all additional proportional representatives elected at properly accredited regional conventions or nominated between regional conventions.

We need to authorize in advance a small group of individuals who will be empowered to convene that first meeting of the new State Committee in April 2024; who can “choose” the current Secretary of the party and the current Treasurer of the party to continue to serve in their offices; and who can then immediately commence the process of appointing and providing orientations to “any and all additional proportional representatives [who have been] elected at properly accredited regional conventions.”

TEXT OF PROPOSAL: The following duly elected Green-Rainbow Party officers shall be temporarily authorized to convene the Spring 2024 State Committee meeting and initiate the essential business of the State Committee, as specified in bylaws 8.5.8 and 8.5.7:

• The current party Co-Chair(s)
• The current party Secretary
• The current party Treasurer

This proposal shall not automatically confer upon any of those officers a continuing status as a State Committee member beyond their temporary roles as conveners and initiators of the new State Committee. Anyone who will become a new regular member of the State Committee at that first meeting must separately have earned their right to be appointed to State Committee by being duly elected as regional representatives at a properly accredited regional convention.   

IMPLEMENTATION: As would be the case even if we did have presidential primary ballot-elected State Committee members, the process of identifying and appointing a full State Committee to serve from 2024 until 2028 requires that either chapters or individuals located in each of the state’s regions (as defined in Addendum B to the bylaws) undertake to conduct proper regional conventions.

This means, in each of the state’s regions that will be electing proportional regional representatives, that the regional chapter or individual organizer must organize and advertise either an in-person or a virtual regional convention event sometime during the month of March 2024 and invite that region’s Green-Rainbow voters to participate. At each regional convention, nominees for service as State Committee representatives can be presented and ranked-choice voting ballots must be administered only to fully vetted and confirmed Green-Rainbow Party-registered voters who reside in that region. Documentation of the regional convention’s participants and official vote results must be provided to the current Secretary of the party in advance of the Spring 2024 State Committee meeting, for anyone elected at that regional convention to be appointed at the first meeting of the new State Committee.    

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS: none arise from the unique provisions of this proposal 

REFERENCES AND ATTACHMENTS: GRP bylaws (last modified January 26, 2019) GRP_Bylaws__Modified_January_26__2019.pdf (d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net)