What if they held an election and we weren’t invited?

One week prior to this [2023] convention, one of the members of a county party was researching the state bylaws, and saw that her county party secretary was required to send a copy of the annual meeting notice to the state party secretary.

County bylaws usually put the annual election of officers in January, and she had not been notified of an election, and neither had several of the other member she knew.

After a few days of reading through all the attachments to minutes of meetings that were hidden from the members, or shared with a select few, these are the main points:

· Before the first meeting called by the new Chair, he held an Executive Committee meeting for the new officers in which he discussed setting up a special Google Groups e-mail list.

· These meeting minutes, and the February, August, and October business meeting minutes, plus an e-mail motion, were finally adopted in November, and sent to a Google Groups list of unknown content, with a cover e-mail stating that this was the "official notice" of the January, 2023 annual election of officers.

· All these meeting minutes state that they notified unknown persons via e-mail.

· The February minutes state that the meeting had been "verbally" notified 30 days earlier at the January election of officers. (This was done after adjournment, and presumably only given to those present.)

· The August meeting minutes celebrates their success in getting 20 people to sign up to the Google Groups using the same Groups name as was later used for the notification of 2023 annual election of officers. This list is described as being a list for "current active members in good standing."

· On the same page, the county secretary reports that county membership is 40 per the state membership list. (The approximate number of members the prior year was 50.)

These points need to be investigated. All the members qualify and pay for this membership organization in exchange for the privilege of participating in the process of organizing for freedom. To cheat them of participation is wrong. It potentially violates the Non-Aggression Principle against fraud.

Some of the members who were not notified probably have no idea anything like this was happening. But the members who attended the 2022 annual meeting, and the following meeting in February, and have still not been contacted again, know that both annual meetings were invalid, and the bylaws that were "adopted" were invalid, all due to improper notice to the members.

Not that they follow either state or county bylaws, anyway...

Consider this "well-crafted gem" of bylaw structure:

Article VII: Meetings
Section I: Annual Meeting.
Section II: Business Meetings.
Section III: Executive Committee Meetings.
Section IV: Transaction of Business Outside of Meetings.
Section V: Quorum. A majority of the Executive Committee shall constitute a quorum for any aforementioned meeting or transaction of business

So, they can just reelect themselves if nobody else is invited.

Sincerely,

Sandra Kallander
Member, Contra Costa County

[The “smoking gun”… Notice from Chris Edgar, Secretary of ca.lp.org:]