It's one week to the mid-term elections in the US.  Some of you who have browsed my sidebar links may have noticed that I like to follow US politics.  I lived in the US for a few years and got my start in Green politics by doing volunteer work for the Green Party congressional candidate in Omaha, Nebraska in 2002.  But I wanted to link to an excellent website called Electoral-Vote.com that tracks the progress of the various US political campaigns [link].  It's worth checking out ...

There was some concerns and confusion being expressed on the GPC EDA list about a requirement that EDA executive members live within the electoral boundaries for that EDA. I sent the following response to the list and I'm also posting it here in case there is some interest ...

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Hi all,

There was never a requirement set by council that EDA executive members live in the riding. I've attached below the requirements approved by council in March of this year. It is unfortunate that there is confusion about this and I hope that if/when staff review the requirements it will help to correct this problem.

I'm the person that proposed the requirement that an individual should not be allowed to sit on the executive of more than one EDA. There are a couple of reasons I made this proposal. One was that I thought it would help minimize problems for the party and for those EDAs if/when problems started to happen with that individual, the person moved, etc. Another reason, at least as important, was that I thought the party needed to start to get beyond the mentality that one person needs to carry the load in multiple areas. If we consider that we likely need to recruit and and mobilize 1000 or more members in a riding to get someone elected I think being an EDA executive in one riding should be more than enough work for one person. Also, I think that having different executives in each EDA will help to increase the overall number of people who have the leadership experience within the party, and this will help to foster our long-term success.

There is nothing preventing an EDA executive in one riding to advise or otherwise help other EDAs get up and running. In fact, I think this is something to be encouraged.

I understand the concerns that some EDAs have had with some of the council requirements. However, I believe that council passed these requirements with the best of intentions. The party is still growing and we are establishing many of our processes for the first time. We should expect that these processes will need to be changed as we find out what works and what doesn't. I'm not particularly tied to any given requirement myself, and it could be that council tried to put in too many requirements too soon. But in my opinion, in the long-term, a well-organized EDA should be able to follow the requirements with a collective contribution of perhaps 25 hours per year - much of which the EDA is going to have to do anyways to be successful (at least that was the intention of council - I understand that it may not be working out that way). But even if it took 100 hours I think this work is a drop in the bucket for an EDA that expects to elect a candidate.

I'd like to encourage leaders of the party (like those EDA executives on this list) to consider how we react to decisions that we disagree with, or other things that happen in the party that we may view as mistakes. There are processes in place to ensure that bad decisions and mistakes can and will be corrected (e.g. by a new council decision or a decision at a General Meeting). Certainly this might take time and there could be some inconvenience along the way. But I think that showing a lack of respect or contempt for others in the party when we disgaree with them is damaging in its own way. As leaders we can help to promote a better internal culture that ultimately will help to ensure that we are better able to work with other parties and the Canadian public once we start to elect MPs. These skills will be necessary since many of our policies propose significant changes to Canadian society and may not be well-received in some quarters.

Regards,
Kevin Colton
Former GPC Council member
Acting EDA CEO for Calgary Centre

[click the link for the EDA requirements]   more »