I. Introduction
You may not have noticed it, but on February 13, 2001, a new
organization came into existence: the Green Party of Pennsylvania
(GPPA), a minor political party governed by Pennsylvania
statutes. Since that time, the GPPA has been using the bylaws
of the Pennsylvania Green Party, the unincorporated association
of local Green groups that has existed for several years,
as its party rules (which is why you probably didn't notice
the change). At its July 15 meeting, however, the Coordinating
Committee of the GPPA voted to adopt new party rules, which
will go into effect January 1, 2002. These party rules create
a new structure for the GPPA, one that allows us to utilize
all the authority granted to us by the law. We have gone
to great lengths, however, to impact as little as possible
on traditional Green organizing; this document will explain
the few things that are impacted and how your local Green
organization can adapt to them.
II. Who Are the Affiliates of the GPPA?
The GPPA is made up of county committees - ideally, one in
each of the commonwealth's 67 counties. Greens have not always
traditionally organized around political boundaries, but
since the only formal functions of the county committees
are authorizing candidates and electing delegates to the
state committee, there are several ways to accommodate to
this structure.
II.1. What if our Green organization includes
more than one county? As long as each county has its own
county committee with its own rules and its own chair and
secretary (who can be "paper officers"
since they are only formally needed to file candidate authorizations),
there is nothing stopping multiple county committees from
meeting at the same time and place. Your organization can
continue to conduct most of its activities as a unified group
under whatever rules and structure you are already using
or may want to use, and you will only need to separate out
into counties when the time comes to formally nominate candidates
and elect delegates to the state committee. For more information
about how this can work, contact Steve Keppel (610-759-9490,
scknd80@aol.com), contact person for the Lehigh Valley Greens,
which currently brings together two county committees into
one unified organization.
II.2. What if we want to have multiple Green
organizations in our county? Our larger counties may very well
find that it is more efficient to split into smaller groups
to do the work of the party on a local level. There are several
ways to do this. The more informal way would be to file rules
and officers for a county committee that only meets when it
is necessary to do its formal work - once again, the nomination
of candidates and election of state committee delegates. Most
of your work could then be done in the smaller groups, which
would meet more regularly. A more formal way of doing this
would be to write rules that specifically invest the authorities
of the county party in municipal organizations; in this case,
each subdivision would need to have defined boundaries.
II.3. Can our campus Green organization affiliate
with the GPPA? The GPPA has no mechanism for the direct affiliation
of campus organzations. Students are encouraged to join their
local Green committees in order to participate in the formal
structures of the state party. Many campus Green clubs are
affiliated with Campus Greens, a national organization. Contact
people for Campus Greens in Pennsylvania are Matt Coulter (215,
610, 717 and 570 area codes, mcoulter@voicenet.com)
and Jonathan Grindell (412, 724 and 814 area codes, killkrockstars@aol.com).
III. Does Our Organization Need to Have Bylaws?
Trick answer: no. Corporations have bylaws, and the GPPA is
not a corporation. As a minor political party, the GPPA operates
under party rules filed with the Department of State, and
our county affiliates similarly operate under party rules
filed with county boards of elections. So the real answer
is yes: county committees of the GPPA must have party rules,
although these rules do not have to govern anything but the
basic functions of the electoral party (say it again: the
nomination of candidates and election of state committee
members), and your organization can conduct its other activities
under whatever rules you would like, written or not. The
sample rules posted at the PA
Green Party website are useful for small and medium-sized
counties; the largest counties may need to get more complex.
Note that the currently posted sample rules differ in several
ways from previous versions, so if you are using rules based
on a previous version, check below to make sure you have
all the necessary articles.
III.1. Do we need to have a mission statement?
Yes, and for the most mundane of reasons. Due to a recent amendment
to the rules of the Green Party of the United States (GPUS),
the GPPA gets to name one delegate to the national committee
for every four congressional districts in the state, with one
catch: we can only count congressional districts in which we
have an affiliated local Green Party with party rules that
include a mission statement. The mission statement used in
the sample rules is the same as that of the GPPA, which uses
the version of the ten key values from the Green Party Platform
2000.
III.2. Do we have to limit membership to voters
enrolled in the Green Party? By law, members of party committees
must be enrolled in the Green Party. If your organization has
general membership rules that include non-voters and/or voters
who are enrolled in other parties, there are several ways to
get around this. First, you can define the membership of your
county committee to be any member of the general membership
who is enrolled in the Green Party. Then, when it comes to
the formal business of the county committee (I don't have to
say it again, do I?), only those people can vote; the rest
of the time, everyone can vote. The Centre County Greens (814-234-4552, centregreens@hotmail.com)
use this structure. Another possibility is for the general
membership to elect a steering committee that serves as the "official"
county committee but can only nominate candidates and elect
state committee delegates who have been endorsed by the general
membership. Note the different terminology: endorsing a candidate
means expressing support for that person's candidacy; nomination
is the act of actually placing the candidate on the ballot.
The Green Party of Philadelphia (215-243-2269, gpop@gpop.org)
uses this structure. In any case, party officers (the chairperson
and secretary) and state committee delegates must be enrolled
Greens.
III.3. Why do we need a chairperson and secretary?
A chairperson and secretary for each county committee are required
by law to sign candidate authorizations for special municipal
elections and by the state party rules to sign candidate authorizations
for regular municipal elections. Your county committee can
decide that these are the only functions of these officers,
or you can give them additional authority; it's up to you.
III.3. What is this business about candidate
authorizations and vacancies? As a minor political party, the
Green Party and its county committees now have the authority
to prevent people from running for office as Greens without
formal Green Party support and the ability to nominate candidates
for special elections without collecting signatures. We cannot
do either of these things, however, without specific language
detailing how they are to be done. It is highly recommended
that you use the language of the sample rules with no substantial
changes. If your organization wants to make any other alterations,
please run them by me (570-372-0503, prindle@greens.org)
to make sure that whatever you write will do what you want
it to do.
III.4. How many delegates do we get to elect
to the state committee? Each county committee is entitled to
elect one delegate for every one percent (rounded to the nearest
whole number) of the enrolled Greens in the state who lived
in that county as of the last primary or general election.
(These numbers can be found at the Department of State's web
site at www.dos.state.pa.us.) Irregardless, each county committee
may elect a minimum of two delegates. The sample rules provide
for an annual election of state committeemembers. If your county
is large or unusually active enough that your enrollment might
conceivably surprass 2.5 percent of the total enrollment in
the state, you may want to provide for special elections in
the event that the number of state committeemembers to which
you are entitled goes up or down in the middle of the year.
IV. So How Do We Nominate Candidates?
County committees (or municipal bodies to which they delegate
their authority) may nominate candidates for any county-level
or municipal-level office. In addition, county committees
may nominate candidates for school director and judge of
the Court of Common Pleas unless the district in question
extends into more than one county. You can use whatever recruitment
and interview processes you would like, but the nomination
is formally made when the county committee votes to authorize
the candidate and the chairperson and secretary submit a
certificate of authorization listing the candidate's name,
address and office sought (be specific) to the county Board
of Elections. (Oh, and the candidate has to collect signatures
from registered voters as well, but that's a whole other
story that your county elections officials will be happy
to explain to you.)
IV.1. What about candidates for other offices?
Candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and state
legislative offices as well as school and judicial offices
in districts that include more than one county are formally
nominated by the state committee. However, unless the district
in question does not overlap with any affiliated counties,
the state committee cannot nominate a candidate that has not
been endorsed (there is that distinction again) by at least
one affiliated county committee. So if you want to nominate
a candidate for one of these offices, have your county committee
vote to endorse that candidate, then communicate the endorsement
to the state committee so they can make the formal nomination.
The only way the state committee has any discretion over nominations
is if two county committees endorse two different candidates
for the same office; in that case, the state committee chooses
between the two, or it can decide not to nominate anyone at
all.
IV.2. What about special elections? In the case
of a special election for local office, if you have party rules
with a list of current officers filed with your county board
of elections, they should mail you the necessary documents
as soon as the election is called. Special election candidates
of the Green Party do not have to collect signatures to get
on the ballot, but they do have to be formally nominated by
the party. For state and federal offices, the same procedure
described in IV.1 applies.
IV.3. How do we keep candidates we don't want
off the ballot? When you file your party rules with the county
board of elections, talk to the person responsible for certifying
nominations and make sure he or she understands the authorization
process. The county should not certify any candidate for whom
a certificate of authorization has not been received. (This,
of course, places a burden on the chairperson and secretary
to coordinate with legitimate candidates to make sure that
authorizations are filed before petitions.) If your county
board of elections refuses to comply with this rule, you may
have to sue. The Department of State admits that the law is
vague on this matter, so it may only be advisable to sue in
an extreme circumstance.
V. We Think We Know What We're Doing. What Next?
Once your Green organization has adopted county committee rules
with which it is satisfied, you will need to file them with
your county board of elections. Be sure to keep them updated
as to who your current officers are. Next, you should contact
John Atkeison, chair of the Accreditation Committee (john@atkeison.org),
which will make a recommendation as to whether you should
be accepted as a county affiliate of the GPPA among the "first
wave" that will constitute the first meeting of the
new State Committee in January of 2002. If you've done everything
right, you should have no problem with the accreditation
process.
VI. We're Lost! What Do We Do?
Contact me at 570-372-0503 or email and
we'll figure out how to solve any difficulties you may be having.
You have until January 1, 2002 before the new state party rules
go into effect, and even if don't get accredited in time for
the first state committee meeting, you have until February
before the 2002 election cycle starts.
