Some assembly required

Having slept for the past 48 hours, we are finally recovering from our biggest, most complex, and most satisfying Assembly and Convention ever! None of us can remember a County Convention where the presidential nomination was still hotly contested at that time. This led us to dust off some old procedures that had only been theoretical up to this point, used in other states but never here. They worked!

One of the biggest changes was the use of voting districts. The basic problem was that a group of 346 people had to elect 205 from among their number to take on an exciting role in higher-level Conventions, possibly leading to a seat at the Democratic National Convention. No one could imagine being given a list of 346 names and having to select 205 in a reasonable amount of time.

The solution was to divide up the county into voting districts. The trick was to make the districts big enough to ensure a reliable supply of alternates to replace any absent delegates; while small enough that the delegates in any group could reasonably contact each other and communicate on the Convention floor. We really guessed that one right: 22 districts seemed to be just the right number to meet both objectives.

Another new procedure was the use of pre-printed ballots for electing delegates. In the past the names had been written on paper only after determining the delegate list through a sort of verbal scrimmage. This was fine when everyone knew everyone else. It doesn't work when most people are new and don't know how to approach it.

The ballot system had its pluses and minuses. On the positive side, it made it much easier for people to match names with faces, and it saved a lot of time, maybe an hour or more. On the minus side, it had only a limited ability to help newbies understand what is in reality a very complex process no matter how you divide it up.

The feedback we've received on the ballot process was mostly positive. Of those who didn't like it, half were old-timers who were particularly skilled at the verbal scrimmage and missed it. The other half, mostly newbies, would have liked something even more strongly structured, perhaps broken up into more, smaller, pieces. Many people wished they had taken more time to read all the emailed instructions we sent them. A dry run example and more tightly-worded instructions would certainly help. An online system for submitting questionnaire responses would have helped many people and saved the volunteers a lot of time as well.

We had a few check-in snags, mostly related to needing much more space and some more preparation time, than we had available to us. The snags worked themselves out fairly quickly with some real-time adjustments by the brilliant and unflappable Sarah Mann. We've all heard that leading Democrats is like herding cats, and we have a new appreciation for that! We ended up only about 10 minutes over our time objective for the Credentials Report. Not bad for a totally new system.

We'll be doing a debrief of all the volunteers to capture what we've learned for next time. It might be 8 years before we have a Convention like this again, but we'll be ready. Many of the lessons can help us at any Assembly.

Comments

[Susie McMahon]

While it is fresh and looking at learning experiences...What about posting a PODCAST on the website prior to the convention explaining the voting procedures etc- perhaps being able to watch and listen - instead of having to read all the rules etc will educate more newbies prior to the event !