Tag Archives: Green Party

Despite the protest of a minority of National Greens, a vacancy election was held to fill the 7th Steering Committee seat last week.

(See Tulsa report here, here, and here.)

Budd Dickinson, California Delegate to the Green Party of the United States, was elected to that seat in a ranked preference election.

This election was controversial among many (but not most) on the GPUS National Committee. An error was made tabulating the vote in Tulsa in the SC election for four of the seven SC seats. The threshold that was entered into the vote counting software was a whole number threshold and should have been a fractional threshold. This resulted in an apparent victory. Several days after the end of the Tulsa convention the software programmer that had written the vote tabulating software drew attention to this error in applying the threshold and Tom Sevigny, delegate from Connecticut, was declared the winner. The tabulating software that was used in Tulsa was the same software that had been used in previous SC elections. Some delegates (who are also members of GDI), after the Tulsa election, came forward with another software vote counting program, not used in Tulsa, which garnered a different outcome and declared Kristin Olsen, Minnesota delegate and GDI member, the winner.

Months of controversy has ensued, including a number of proposals brought before the National Committee. Some of these failed causing certain NC delegates to claim that their failure constituted a positive decision by the NC and some of the proposals were adopted. The outcome of one of these proposals, which passed, called for the resolution of the “Sevigny-Olsen” joint proposal prior to conducting a vacancy election. The “Sevigny-Olsen” joint proposal was considered by the NC and failed to be adopted. The “Sevigny-Olsen” joint proposal probably failed due to the resignation of Sevigny from the GPUS. Meanwhile, after having been nominated as a candidate in the vacancy election, the Minnesota Party instructed Olsen not to run in the election. During the course of these conflicts, impeachment charges were brought against five of the seven Steering Committee co-chairs by three GPUS (and GDI) members (tribunal currently in progress) along with threats from “GDI states” to disaffiliate from the GPUS.
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