Yesterday afternoon Democrats Abroad UK had its biannual meeting and election of officers. I'm honored and delighted to report that I was unanimously elected Vice Chair (this sounds better than it is since I was unopposed! Guess I scared off the competition) and that Bill Barnard was overwhelmingly re-elected Chair. Alicia Skubick is now our Secretary - elected by a massive majority - and Eileen Taylor ran unopposed for Treasurer.
For the most part the meeting went smoothly - the big exception being a heated debate and some confusion about the election of our Executive Committee.
After the event, I spoke to quite a few people about their perceptions of the day. A couple people who are "old timers" - ie, have been around for a few previous election cycles - came up to me and said that was one of the least chaotic of these meetings that we've had. Several others, for whom this was their first meeting, told me that they found it confusing, they couldn't understand why things were being done the way they were.
Here's the situation as I see it - the DAUK bylaws were drafted for a very different organisation than we are today. They are vague in some areas, unwieldy in others, and altogether better suited for a small member organisation than for the large political organisation that we are today. One of the areas where they are vague and unhelpful is in the election process - this was exacerbated by some amendments that were made a few years ago with the laudable intention of opening up the voting process to more people, but which failed to consider the implications of imposing those revisions on top of a structure designed for the more closed voting system. In short, it's a bit of a mess - the Nominating Committee and the Executive Committee each time try to set rules that will clarify some of this confusion, but it's always imperfect. And yes, we are working on getting this stuff sorted out, but the revision process is slow and nobody wanted to focus on it during an election year (we were a little busy!).
Anyway, my larger point is this: this is all very "inside baseball" stuff, the details of DAUK internal election processes and such like. But these types of problems aren't unique to us - more often than not Democracy is pretty messy stuff. The best thing we can do is approach this with some humility and some patience combined with a determination to make it work - and maybe some duct tape to stick the whole thing together.
It's not just us - the US Constitution has some of the same problems. It too, was designed for an organisation very different than the one we live in today. It never envisioned universal education, or direct election of Senators, or international air travel, or the Internet. But we've been patching it together for years, with ad hoc updates via court rulings or clarifying legislation, or just custom and traditio. Somehow, it all works. Because we all want it to. In my view it's that collective wanting that makes up a democracy, as much as the specific rules and laws.
I'm sure that all of us newly elected officers will make mistakes over the next couple of years. But if you'll keep wanting this organisation to work, we'll keep trying to make it work better. Thanks for your patience!
