Green Party Conference is rolling ever closer, and members will have received (or will soon receive) an innocuous sounding email today that includes details of something called the Prioritisation Ballot. As a member of Standing Orders Committee, I’m going to pitch for why you should rank our four motions highly in the ballot. And as an added bonus, I’m going to explain what the Prioritisation Ballot is and how it works. Though please note, this is my personal view, not an official SOC position.
First, the SOC Motions!
The full rules about how Conference works are written up in a document called Standing Orders for Conduct of Conference (SOCC). SOCC allows various people to submit motions in various ways. As a national committee, SOC can submit up to four motions so long as we stay away from policy. We’re allowed to put forward suggested changes to Conference and the constitution essentially.
Our four motions are:
D17 SOC Motion – Constitutional amendment re leadership election
D18 SOC Motion – Constitutional amendment re role of RON
D19 SOC Motion – SOCC amendment for conference reform
D20 SOC Motion – SOCC amendment for separated motion submission deadlines
And can be found in the first agenda (Green Spaces log-in required).
D17 is a constitutional amendment that tidies up complications that arise when a co-leader resigns. D18 is a constitutional amendment that requires Re-Open Nominations to remain a live option throughout internal elections. D20 tweaks SOCC so that the deadline for co-proposers to motions is one week after the final deadline for motions themselves.
D19 – SOCC amendment for conference reform
D19 is a bigger motion. It makes a big change to the way motions are voted on at Conference, then a bunch of other changes to make the main change work well.
The big change is this: instead of voting on motions in plenary immediately after debating them, motions that have been debated go into a Conference Ballot which opens shortly after that plenary. (Plenary btw just means a session for hearing motions). Attendees at Conference will be automatically registered for Conference Ballots, so can go ahead and vote as soon as it opens if they want. So voting will still happen at Conference. Each motion in the Conference Ballot will have links to the motion text, the recording of the pre-Conference workshop where it was discussed, and the recording of the debate on that motion.
The big differences are that Conference Ballots will stay open for one week, and any other member of the Party can also register to vote in them. Conference Ballots will happen in two stages for motions that are subject to amendments; one week to vote on amendments, then one week to vote on the final form of the motion. Motions without any amendments will just need the one week.
Supporting changes include moving the SOC Report to a special pre-Conference meeting of SOC so that precious plenary time isn’t taken up with debates over SOC rulings or the order of business. Voting on the SOC Report will then take place in a one week ballot along the same lines as Conference Ballots, closing the night before the first day of Conference itself. There are other tweaks involved but they get increasingly technical and optional (they are still cool though and you should totally go read them).
These two big changes, Conference Ballots and pre-consideration of the SOC Report, will free up masses of plenary time so that more motions can be debated and put to the vote. At Spring Conference this year, the SOC Report was debated for two whole plenaries because of a controversy over a Late Motion. And received wisdom has it that if the SOC Report is voted down, then Conference can’t go ahead because the order of business isn’t agreed. It makes so much sense to have any debates about the SOC Report ahead of Conference.
Then there’s voting. At every plenary, the voting system needs to be explained, rightly, so that everyone understands how they will be voting. Then, when it comes to voting itself, more time needs to be taken to help people whose access needs haven’t been sufficiently supported or who haven’t had their voting code. Between explaining the voting system and helping people at risk of losing out on voting, another big chunk of plenary time gets diverted from debating motions. A voting period of a week allows much more time to attend to people’s access needs.
Besides the issue of plenary time, there is the issue of access to our Party’s democratic process itself. Currently, attendance at Conference is the preserve of people who can either afford up to several hundred pounds in registration, travel, and accommodation plus three days out of their lives; or people who can afford the registration fee and three days it takes to attend remotely. Alternatively, members who can’t attend themselves can give their voting rights to a Conference attendee. Each Conference attendee can hold up to five proxy votes, meaning that if I gather up five proxies from people I know but you are a newb with no contacts, I now have six votes to your one.
This strikes me as a democratic set up that actively favours people with the time and money to attend Conference.
I’m enthusiastic about D19 because it opens up the decision making process of the Party to all members in a way that Conference attendance can’t. But it does so without killing off Conference. Those motions still need to be debated, the recordings made available to voters in the Conference Ballots. Currently, the chatter around Conference tends to be quite an inward thing. With Conference Ballots, there will be more of a need to convince the wider membership to register and vote on motions; a broader conversation about policy and how the organisation works will be possible.
And of course, Conference isn’t just about motions. It’s about coming together as Greens, hearing speeches, attending fringe events, groups having their AGMs. In many ways, the debate on motions would be more deliberative, more collegiate, and more Green without the pressure of each debate ending in a vote and immediate result. Instead, Conference Ballots allows for something else to happen after plenary debates: reflection and contemplation. In the heat of a debate, I am less likely to reflect and more likely to double down. After a debate, when I have time to reflect on what I’ve heard, that’s when I am most likely to change my mind.
You might not agree with the above, but hopefully you’ll agree that a debate about our decision making process is valuable enough to rank this motion highly. After all, Conference can always vote it down or refer it back for further work. Whatever the outcome, I think the debate itself is worth having.
How to Prioritisation Ballot!
SOCC’s rules specify that the prioritisation ballot runs using the modified borda count method (with an additional twist).
It goes like this: you rank motions in a list (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc). The motions you’ve ranked receive a number of points based on how many motions you ranked in total. So, in Section D there are 22 motions to rank. If you rank them all, then your 1st choice will get 22 points, 2nd will get 21, 3rd = 20, 4th = 19, and so on. But if you only rank the five motions you like, then ok sure, every other motion will get 0, but your list of five will get 1st = 5, 2nd = 4, 3rd = 3, 4th = 2, 5th = 1.
In short, modified borda count rewards you for ranking everything. So the best thing you can do for that one motion you like is get it 22 points by voting on everything.
The twist of lime in this voting gin and tonic is that an unheard motion modifier gets applied to every motion that was submitted to, but not heard at, the last Conference, and has been re-submitted to the current Conference largely unchanged. These motions get bonus points equal to 0.5 times their modified borda count total for each consecutive Conference they were submitted to but not heard at. So, a motion that came to last Conference, wasn’t heard, and is back again gets a 0.5 multiplier. A motion that came to the last three Conferences, wasn’t heard at any of them, and is back again, gets a 1.5 multiplier.
So a motion with 1,000 points will get a bonus 500 points for each consecutive prior Conference to which it was submitted but not heard.
Internal Party democracy is worth your time
Much of this sounds quite arcane, and that’s because it is. But it’s worth your time looking at the motions that have been submitted and ranking them. With more motions than there is plenary time to hear them all, motions that rank low are unlikely to get heard. This makes a real difference to what Conference can and can’t debate and vote on.
PsychoPolitico 