Resolution AS AMENDED 2025-04-GR01: To Poll Membership on Delegate Election Voting Method

Member Statements
1

Statement AGAINST by Sam D.

The proposed resolution is a waste of the membership’s time and chapter resources—our parliamentary authority, Robert’s Rules of Order, describes straw polls like this as objectionable “because it neither adopts nor rejects a measure and hence is meaningless and dilatory.” This poll is also methodologically suspect, a trait of the resolution that sponsors refused to budge on in negotiation: the proposed poll is skewed to over-represent the approval voting method, since the “combined” method is functionally equivalent to approval voting. Finally, the time spent debating this resolution has clearly prevented the chapter from dedicating any time to either discussing the actual issue of voting methods or national convention topics, which is ostensibly what the sponsors of this resolution wanted to do.

I oppose this resolution not just for its poor design but also because passing it would validate any attempts to silence meaningful chapter discussion on political issues by creating a smokescreen of endless procedural debate. Please, comrades, if you did not enjoy this series of votes that have absorbed all chapter democratic capacity leading up to our convention delegation elections, vote this resolution down.

2

Statement AGAINST by Joe R.

I sponsored the original base resolution, but I can’t support it as amended. Polling members to inform chapter decisions is a good thing to do, but should be administered by a chapter-wide body on the platform that regularly gets the highest participation from members rather than through a working group’s newsletter. It’s also still unclear how exactly the Steering Committee would administer a poll this way, and as a result would likely be an unnecessarily burdensome and time-consuming task to come up with an ad hoc solution.

3

Statement AGAINST by Elizabeth T.

Hi comrades, I’m Elizabeth T. (she/her) – I’ve been an active member since 2021 and organize with the Abolition and Internationalism WGs. I’m AGAINST this resolution for a nonbinding straw poll because it is an enormous waste of time to hold multiple votes that have zero impact on how our chapter actually selects delegates for the National Convention.

Here are the extra steps this resolution requires us to do:

  1. Vote on an amendment [PAST]. This mitigation amendment passed earlier in April and thankfully prevents our chapter from wasting $160 on a nonbinding straw poll conducted via OpaVote.
  2. Vote on this resolution [NOW]. This amended resolution will force our chapter to hold a nonbinding straw poll and is still a complete waste of time (even if it would no longer waste money, thanks to the amendment in #1).
  3. Vote in a nonbinding straw poll [FUTURE]. This bizarre nonbinding poll will ask members whether we would like to use a proportional ranked-choice system (single-transferable vote or “STV”) or a winner-take-all system (“approval voting”) to select delegates for the National Convention. The nonbinding poll is being sponsored by opponents of proportional ranked-choice voting, who claim the poll is necessary to do “member education.” But a straw poll isn’t educational.

Regardless of these 3 extra steps, we will already have (1) a binding vote on whether our chapter will use a proportional (STV) or winner-take-all (approval) method to send delegates to National, and (2) the actual vote on delegates to National. During that first binding vote, we will already do “member education” through FOR/AGAINST statements during debate, as well as 1:1 chats with our comrades. This vote will likely pass with the threshold needed to enforce STV, making this resolution and the nonbinding straw poll entirely performative.

STV isn’t so “complicated” as to require unprecedented, bureaucratic, and pointless procedures for the sake of “member education.” It’s a proportional and democratic system that is already used by DSA’s National Political Committee, YDSA’s National Coordinating Committee, the New York and Boston DSA chapters, the Portland City Council (where both DSA-endorsed candidates won), and the Irish Parliament.

EXAMPLE: There are 2 slates of 10 candidates running for 10 open seats. Slate A gets 60% of the vote, and Slate B gets 40%.

Approval Voting: Slate A wins all 10 seats (100%), and Slate B gets 0 seats (0%), depriving 40% of voters of any representation. This is deeply undemocratic–and essentially what happened at the 2023 National Convention.

STV: Slate A would get 6 seats (60%), and Slate B would get 4 seats (40%). This is proportional and democratic.

In any case, regardless of which system you prefer, let’s just vote on it directly instead of wasting everyone’s time. We have more serious things to do.

4

Statement AGAINST by Aura K.

Hey comrades,

I’m Aura; I spoke against the straw poll resolution when it was introduced at the last GBM and wanted to reprise my comments here. To be clear, I still urge you to vote against this needless resolution – while the resolution removed the monetary cost associated with it, there are still some major problems that negatively affect our chapter.

The fundamental problem is this: straw polls do not gauge chapter opinion – but they do gauge different sides’ ability to turn out supporters. And sure, that’s useful for things that have an effect on the direction of our chapter; but this, by design, is nonbinding. The only thing we can expect out of the votes required by this resolution (both the vote to have the poll and the vote in the poll itself) is muddying the waters of what the chapter wants to do.

Finally, anything accomplished by this poll is obviated by the actual binding vote that we should have at our May GBM. And the actual forum for educating our comrades about the benefits of various voting methods is from the arguments for/against during that debate and, well, just talking to one another.

So please, let’s try and move this chapter away from needless votes and bureaucratic posturing. There’s a lot of good things for us to do and we can focus our parliamentary procedures on situations where we really need it.

Solidarity and lal salaam comrades,

— Aura K (she/her)

5

Statement AGAINST by Ken B.

Comrades,

I’m regretfully writing today to urge you to vote AGAINST this resolution. While I had hoped that we could poll membership’s will with a simple, secure OpaVote, we cannot due to the passage of this amendment. Instead we will be using an unknown system, that we have no guarantee will be secure or well run. There is no plan by the Publications team to run the poll and no infrastructure that they are prepared to use. Furthermore, administrative matters like this should be handled by the Administrative Committee and the Steering committee, rather than an independent working group not democratically accountable to membership.

While I had hoped this poll would generate discourse and provide a forum for member feedback, I do not believe this will be possible due to the passage of the amendment, specifically changing the venue to OpaVote. It’s unfortunate that the proponents of the amendment refused to budge on this issue, as the authors of the original resolution were prepared to accept their changes to the other language in the resolution.

6

Statement AGAINST by Julia P.

While I strongly believe in the importance of soliciting input from members to inform our democratic processes and would have voted yes on the resolution as originally written, the concerns I raised about the process of distributing a poll through the Weekly Update as opposed to OpaVote still stand. The precedent of allowing a working group of unelected (and therefore unaccountable) members to disseminate ballots rather than situating this process within Steering or AdCom undermines the authority of elected leadership, which is disruptive to our central structures and harmful to our democracy. It’s also concerning to me that the Publications WG has yet to produce a clear plan as to what platform they will use to host the poll. Per minutes from the most recent Publications Board meeting, the idea is to create a new web page (specifics TBD) to host the poll, which strikes me as a heavy administrative burden. Given the urgent need to focus our energy on organizing and the fact that chapter leaders and active members are already stretched thin, I find it unwise to expend resources on a project like this, especially when we have an existing structure for taking votes that we could easily have used. I encourage everyone to vote NO on the resolution as amended.

7

Statement AGAINST by Preston K.

I strongly encourage comrades to vote against the amended resolution to issue a non-binding poll regarding how the chapter should handle delegate elections. While I appreciate the amendment for moving the non-binding poll away from our binding voting platform and correcting the misleading options such a poll would have offered, the resolution as amended is still fatally flawed.

National DSA is clear that the ideal method for handling delegate elections is through STV, and provides mechanisms for a chapter to ensure the correct decision is made. This enshrined preference for STV is a democratic safeguard against the majoritarian tendencies that unfortunately dominate some chapters, including our own. And far from hypothetical, our current approval voting system has been used in the past to disenfranchise minority tendencies within the chapter, leading to our chapter’s conduct being investigated by National DSA, who in response reaffirmed their stance that approval voting is not the proper method to elect delegates. Support for STV elections are widespread, as the authors of this non-binding poll resolution (and those in their orbit) have made similar arguments for the advantages of proportional representation and ranked choice voting even as they oppose its use for delegate elections.

While the intent behind the resolution is a good one—that we should follow the will of the chapter when making decisions—this specific resolution calls to do so on the one issue that explicitly does not need mass buy-in. A proportional delegation as determined by ranked choice voting is the correct decision, and the faction behind this resolution seems to want to do everything except make it easy for the chapter to make that right decision. Instead of empowering members and amplifying their voices, it buries the chapter deeper into a swamp of parliamentarianism, forcing new members and members not plugged into chapter politics to read member statements like this arguing over the specifics of a non-binding straw poll to inform a later binding vote on how to conduct delegate elections, followed by a binding vote to elect said delegates. In reality, nothing this chapter does seems to have the buy-in of the membership. Looking at recent votes, an amendment to Aquí Estamos, Y No Nos passed with about 150 affirmative votes, Aquí Estamos, Y No Nos itself passed with 112 affirmative votes, Julia P was elected to Steering with 167 votes, and the amendment to this resolution was passed with 131 votes. Assuming we have roughly 2,100 members in good standing, we routinely pass resolutions and elect comrades with the assent of only 5-8% of the chapter. A successful invoking of STV in accordance with national bylaws, which require a 10-15% threshold of votes or signatures, would dwarf the buy-in of anything else the chapter has done in recent memory.

Instead of asking what voting mechanism has the buy-in of the membership, we should be asking why the chapter as a whole doesn’t seem to have the buy-in of its membership. And a major part of the disconnect between chapter members and chapter actions is the unnecessary parliamentary games that some elements within our chapter would rather play instead of working to constructively build a multi-tendency socialist organization that can build and contest power. Vote down this amended resolution and stop turning our internal democracy into a site of struggle.

8

Statement AGAINST by Beth S.

I am writing to urge the membership to vote AGAINST this resolution. I disagree completely with the basis of the resolution, amended or unamended. I expect DSA as an organization to support democratizing initiatives like STV, which National demonstrated with their encouragement of its use across chapters. I expect us to want to live our values when we can, and this one is easy to put in place. A poll is unnecessary - the National Convention rules already provide for a more meaningful measure in the form of the petition/motion mechanism. If that effort succeeds - and I hope it does - then we will use STV for this delegate election, as we have in recent delegate elections except for the last one. If that effort fails, we will use approval voting again per our current bylaws. What would a poll accomplish? I generally appreciate desires to “take the temperature” of membership, but I can’t see anything to do with the resulting data at this stage besides start a pointless argument. It’s like a pollster asking me who I plan to vote for the week before Election Day - that question is clearly not for my benefit. I would never in a million years go out to canvass my neighbors and ask them to please support approval voting in our local, state, and national elections. Why on earth would I want it in my organizing home?

9

Statement AGAINST by Bakari

Hi, I’m Bakari, I’m one of the sponsors of the original resolution before it was amended, and I encourage you to vote no on this resolution as amended. For some context: at the May 18th General Body Meeting the attendees will vote on whether to use the Hare variant of Single Transferable Vote (STV Hare) as the method used in our chapter’s upcoming delegate elections for DSA National Convention delegates, where delegates vote on National DSA’s stances and leadership. That vote at the May GBM won’t have asynchronous voting or the opportunity to submit member statements like we usually would. Because of National DSA rules, if 15+% of the members at that meeting vote yes on the motion to use STV Hare then we’ll use STV Hare. I expect that motion to pass and us to use STV Hare for the delegate elections and no poll could change that. The poll was meant to get more asynchronous feedback from members about voting methods before the STV motion happened, considering that the chapter was split down the middle about STV and Approval a few months ago, there are some other voting methods that include the strengths of both Approval and STV like the one included in the poll, and we wouldn’t have our normal asynchronous processes to discuss the vote at the May GBM. Polls aren’t something we usually do, but we also don’t usually have live votes outside of local convention, so we introduced the poll resolution, partially so people could debate about it in these member statements. If you had to google what the Hare STV quota was and how it compares to the (imo superior) Droop STV quota, and don’t think you would have fully absorbed that info in 15 minutes of debate at a meeting, that’s part of why I value asynchronous processes.

The original resolution said the poll would be implemented with OpaVote for ease of administration and privacy. But the amendment that was introduced and passed said the poll couldn’t use OpaVote, while not offering any alternative. When I’ve asked sponsors of the amendment what they wanted to use instead of the tool we already have, they told me their current plan is to build a polling solution on the chapter’s website that authenticates submissions, from scratch, in a week or two, on volunteer time, and apparently with no bugs on launch. From what some of the sponsors of this resolution have said while discussing it, they are fully aware that the method they chose is a massive time sink and might not even be possible to do in the period between this vote closing and the May GBM. That on its own is more than enough reason to vote no on this resolution as amended, let’s save ourselves the headache and focus on National Convention.