The recent controversies at the California Democratic convention underscore
how few people understand the current system, and how few are actually involved.
Every two years, California Democrats elect 7 self-identified
females and 7 other than self-identified females from each Assembly District as delegates to the California Democratic
party. Only a tiny proportion of
registered voters participate in these elections. There are almost 8 million registered
Democrats in California. Of those, less
than 400,000 voters participated in the last elections, held in January of this year. That’s
one half of 1 percent. In my Assembly district, the elections were
held on Shabbat, effectively disenfranchising traditionally observant Jewish voters. This is in violation of the parties own guidelines.
There is little transparency and little accountability
in these elections. Assembly District Delegate Elections are not regulated by
the California Fair Political Practices Commission.
Those who are elected can vote for Party officers, endorse
candidates for statewide, legislative and congressional office, attend the
annual convention, and to
introduce, endorse and vote on resolutions and ballot measures.
This is how
extremists like David Mandel in Assembly
District 7 , Ronald “Chris” Yatooma in Assembly District 6 and Yassar Dahbour in Assembly District 9 are elected. This
is how bigoted and one sided resolutions are introduced into Democratic party policies. And we can expect this to continue until moderate members of the Democratic get more
involved.
No comments:
Post a Comment