Liberal Convention #2 - Delay, Delay, Delay - and it isn't Tom

The good news is that we only had to call 911 twice, and once it was because John Turner was having a stroke during his speech. I am on the longest conference call I have ever been on and figured I could squeeze out another post on the convention.

Attendees at the convention complained about just about everything, but on Friday the number one complaint was the line-ups and the "lack of organization." Let me state uncategorically that this was not the fault of the people organizing the convention - it can only be blamed on the FOUR LEADING CANDIDATES and their decision to lie to their volunteers. Let me explain...

I will admit, there were a lot of line-ups. People tend to line up for things. In this case, many of the people lining up had no expectation of getting anything- at least they shouldn't have had one.

There were two things to line-up for: "Bump-ups" on Friday morning and voting on Friday night. The bump up process involved filling the spots for delegates who were not able to attend with otherwise eligible volunteers/alternates. There were people from each campaign for every one of the 308 ridings and demographically exempted groups. There were not positions for all of them.

So why the fuck were they there? Well, I suspect that for the most part it was because they were tricked into attending by the campaigns who were trying to create a buzz on the convention floor. I imagine the conversation went something like - "I promise that you can get a spot as a voting delegate. Oh, you can't get a spot? I'm sorry, why don't you hang out with us until the end?"

The extra thousand people applying for positions they couldn't possibly win added a logistical hurdle that was not entirely expected. To that end, the completed voters list was not available until they were all processed. While they were processed, they had to wait. Tough. Shit. The fault rests with the CAMPAIGNS who lied to these people to get them there to begin with. The worst offender was Mr. Kennedy's campaign.

For the record, if you can't come to the convention, maybe you shouldn't have run as a delegate? Ok, maybe a dude here or a lady there had to drop out at the last minute, but come on, there were 1200 plus people waiting in line! I would posit that one in 15 people who applied to be bumped up got in as a voting delegate? Maybe one in 20? And, by the way, the observers fee was not insignificant.

So, after a day of waiting around to be processed, the campaigns crammed everyone up against the walls of the voting room EARLIER than the pre-determined schedule provided. Why? Vote early, vote often, and then make sure you are in the convention room for our speech. Well when 4,600 people show up to vote at 3 PM when the list hasn't even been completed yet because way too many people showed up to be bumped-up, it created havoc.

The polls finally opened at around 4:30 - and people were mad at the organizers. At seven o'clock, you could have fired a cannon through the voting room. The polls were open until 10:10. In the meantime it was a total gong show because the CAMPAIGNS pushed their people through the lines earlier than they had to.

It should also be mentioned that on the first ballot, there were 14 different ballots depending on who you were a delegate for. Administrative hurdles were added as delegates trying to commit fraud were caught doing so. Bad delegates. Bad CAMPAIGNS for trying to commit fraud.

Sadly, many delegates/observers saw the Friday of the convention as a strong rationale for the One person/One vote proposition. Bah, Flim-shaw I say - all that would do is create 308 separate gong shows. The whole mess was solved on Saturday when, after dealing with the first ballot, and with only one thing to vote on, the voting went much more smoothly. By the last ballot, it took less than 40 minutes.