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NDP Leadership #142
March 24, 2012 - 3:59pm
Here?
Another delay. Third ballot results to be announced around 6pm. Fourth ballot results maybe after HNIC - midnight??
Ahah! It's my fault. I kept trying to log on. I was my own denial of service attack! So they have shut me out, so the convention delegates can vote first!
Seriously???
I love unity.
I'll bet Mulcair takes most of Nash's 16%, just barely, with Cullen and Topp taking their fair share.
"Anybody but Mulcair" was stillborn.
Voted Ashton 1st round, Cullen 2nd round (Nash didn't stand a chance), Topp 3rd round (Cullen doesn't stand a chance).
God, what a frigging embarrassment this is.
So why should the NDP be embaraassed by the fact it is taking longer to vote? I don't see why the NDP should be not wanting to resist the frame that somehow this is bad for the NDP. And why should we be embarassed by admitting the volume exceeded expectations? If anything that is postivie.
If Pat Martin can't better represent using a postivie frame, find someone else for G-d sakes. And would someone please tell Mansbridge to shut the hell up with "this doesn't look good for the NDP", BULLSHIT!!!!!
Democracy is never pretty!
Come on people, fight the frame! I don't care what Mansbridge thinks. Someone tell him to shut the hell up! All this shows is engagement. What's the problem? Dexter is on the CBC right now making this point. Push back!
Boom Boom, this is in no way an embarassment unless we allow it to be framed this way.
We're talking about a few thousand online votes, though. If we ever needed an argument against online voting, we have it now.
I got my vote in. But it's been a gruesome pain.
The technical problems caused the delays in the first place, Arthur. The NDP seems to have anticipated everything except those.
It didn't. They should have been ready for 25,000 people voting from home. They only got 5,000. No excuse.
Before the Federal Budget, at least
1st round: not open to mobile voters at all and had to find a desktop machine in order to cast my ballot.
2nd round: was able to vote while mobile although it was incredibly slow. Because it was slow the time was extended.
3rd round: was able to cast my ballot at 2:29 and got confirmation but the site crashed immediately afterwards at 2:30 and has remained pretty much inaccessible to all since then. Has been shut down completely until 4:30 to allow voters at convention to cast their ballot and will reopen at 4:40 to allow outside voters access.
This is not being hosted by the party. They are paying a commercial online voting firm to manage this process. As a paying party member, I hope the party gets their money back and a good penalty back for the trouble.
Look gang, even if what you say is true, we shouldn't be allowing any frame other then the one we want to permeate people's conciousness. I learned that during my military PR training, Never let the other side set what people see as true. The Libs and Tories are experts at this. We really need to learn how to do this.
The turnout is very low, and yet the explanation for the technical problem is that the vote has exceeded expectations.
That "explanation" for the problem is as embarrassing as the problem itself.
Lucky they didn't get more than 15% voter turnout among those who didn't send in advance ballots!
Can you imagine Pastor Mansbridge saying this about a Liberal or Conservative convention: "Not a good situation for the Tories. They look bad on this one....This does not augur well for the party." ?
If wariness of Mulcair's "centricism" encourages NDP members to form better social democratic policies, Mulcair's election will turn out to be a good thing.
Mulcair wants to win power so he's not about to create a civil war within the only party that can get him to 24 Sussex. At the end of the day, Mulcair or any NDP leader has to abide by the policies set at NDP conventions. So it's up to NDP members to establish the policies that the party will run on in 2015. Party member only have themselves to blame if their policies allow their leadership too much leeway to act against the wishes of the grassroots.
This is a lot less embarrassing than the way Liberals had their last leader imposed upon them.
I don't understand how "higher than anticipated demand" makes sense as an excuse, when we're seeing so many fewer votes than expected. Unless, that is, that there are a lot of members being denied their right to vote, which is a disaster far greater than running late. (Something nearly every convention of every party does.)
Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet has gone over to Topp!
In my opinion, Mansbridge is throwing a hissy fit over having to work later.
Things happen. I agree with Arthur Cramer. Reframe it and move on.
The party needs to take responsibility for this, tell people they will try their best to correct it, do test runs of whatever system they select and ask those who failed to register their vote or had great difficulty in doing so to provide info on their experience in order to avoid this problem in the future. Failure to address this will cost the party memberships and credibility. Don't be surprised if the Cons comment is: If they can't run an election, how do expect them to run a country? (I didn't say it would be fair.)
Alice Funke on CTV said the problem could have been aggravated by hackers trying to crash the system by overwhelming it. This could be for their own political interests or for the sheer fun of hacking the system. The security of the future system needs to be checked in the future.
+1
Well I mean, if you want to reframe this whole thing, blame the company that is running the voting system, not the NDP (who isn't).
I hope your voting issues don't worsen, you almost definately have another round to get through.
oh yeah, and don't forget that we're likely to find out that thousands of dippers didn't receive their balloting package and didn't know/have time/have interest to do what i did - multiple calls and emails - to get that taken care of.
so before we even went to convention, it's likely that thousands of members were disenfranchised. THEN add to that the utter incompetence we've seen today. not good, ndp, not good.
No kidding.
"We were only expecting 20% turnout and we got 50% and that's why our system was overwhelmed!" I don't know, it doesn't have that great a ring.