From: geoffg@sco.COM (Geoff Galitz)
Subject: Re: Candidate Accountability
Organization: The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc.
Date: Tue, 05 Jan 1993 22:15:59 GMT


In article <gelinas.726169455@merit.edu> gelinas@merit.edu (Joe Gelinas) writes:
>ladasky@netcom.com (John J. Ladasky II) writes:
>
>>	Assuming that one can stand to wait for the end of an elected offi-
>>cial's term, there are two options available to the Green Party.  The first
>>option is available to any political party; when the primary rolls around,
>>run a candidate in opposition to the incumbent.  If there is no candidate
>>strong enough to challenge the incumbent, then most political parties would
>>be stuck.  The GPOC, however, has one additional option that no other party
>>currently posesses in its bylaws; it's called "none of the above" (NOTA).
>>If we don't have a competitive candidate to unseat the incumbent, we can
>>still remove the incumbent in the primary.  In this way, the candidate is
>>subject to additional accountability to the Green Party.  A candidate who
>>wishes to run with the Greens would have a much harder time abandoning
>>their original constituency for some other group.
>  
>So the incumbent doesn't run as a Green.  Instead s/he runs in the 
>General Election as an Independent, with the same support that got 
>hir elected in the first place.  
>
>>	There's another use for NOTA that was demonstrated in the 1992
>>election season.  Several people in the Los Angeles area entered races for
>>various partisan seats on behalf of the Green Party.  However, it was dis-
>>covered before the primary that one of these contestants was a disgruntled
>>member of another party who had simply registered a few dozen of his friends
>>with the Greens, and got them to sign his petition to enter the race as a
>>Green.  The local Greens found out about this intruder, but no one within 
>>the group felt prepared to run against him.  Thus, the group successfully
>>waged a NOTA campaign against him.  In this way, a candidate who did not
>>represent the Greens was prevented from running on their behalf.
>  
>Since the candidate didn't have enough support to win the General Election,
>the loss of the Primary didn't have much effect.  Or so it seems from this
>distance.  
> 
>In all of this discussion, it must be remembered that Primaries are 
>intra-party contests.  Local rules (and economic realities) may make
>it harder for independent candidates to get elected, but they seldom
>make it impossible for the candidate to campaign.
>
>                   Joseph L. Gelinas, Jr.
>            gelinas@merit.edu    gelinas@umich.edu


	The option of NOTA on the party level has two basic functions.
First, it is to protect the party, and it's consituants from a
campaign that may prove detrimental to the party's stance.  Secondly,
instituting NOTA on the party level is a statement.
	That statement says that the Green Party has heard that people
want a NOTA option on the general ballots, and we are responding, and
will push for it on the general election level.


Geoff Galitz
Computer Services Coordinator
Green Party of Santa Cruz County 
	
-- 

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"Why don't you ask them?  You'll probably get just as a fanciful answer
from them, as our Bible gives us."   
	- Bishop Juan de Acosta on the origin of the Native Americans
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         Geoff Galitz ** geoffg@sco.com ** or ** galitz@igc.org
                      Santa Cruz, California, US