More NRA election stuff
A bit back, I linked to a pro/con of the various bylaw change proposals. The big con there was that it was set up to protect existing members. And Knox wrote about that here. Now, Sebastian has chimed in with a counter:
First, the bylaw changes: Im voting yes. NRA has grown a lot, and requirements for recall and petition candidates ought to change with the size of the voting membership. After Glenn Beck started promoting the recall against Norquist, I realized there was a lot of room for someone willing to burn some money to cause very serious mischief within NRA. Most of these changes are aimed on closing the door on that.
I suppose that is possible. He also lists who he’s voting for Board of Directors. John Richards on round up endorsements here. He’s also not a fan of the bylaw changes.
On the bylaw changes, I’m currently torn. Anyone else have any input they’d like to add?
February 9th, 2017 at 10:40 pm
If I may, I suggest reading Jeff Knox’s thoughts on the bylaw changes (he’s against them as they seem to promote protectionism for the sitting directors). Jeff the is the son of Neal Knox and is someone well worth listening to regarding our Second Amendment Rights (and the NRA). regards, Alemaster
February 10th, 2017 at 10:39 am
I refer to the Hugo Awards for Science Fiction and Fantasy writing, and the Sad Puppies campaign to wrest the nominating and awarding of lucrative, prestigious Hugos from the cabal of leftist progs who thought they owned the whole operation. The SPs encouraged just a few simple things: sign up for membership, nominate good writers, vote for the writers you like. With this simple method they caused an enormous amount of change in the Hugos, and brought to light the vile nature of the progs in their chosen field.
The NRA could do worse than to have a wider membership, voting for the people they nominate and the positions they like. Sign up, participate, and let the chips fall where they may.
February 10th, 2017 at 11:58 am
Mine came in the mail yesterday. Haven’t even opened it yet. I guess they mail out the local ones last.
February 10th, 2017 at 12:11 pm
I agree with mikee. Down with the bylaws changes. More membership is good.
February 11th, 2017 at 2:05 am
mikee:
you forgot to mention that the Hugo Progressives clique responded by screwing with the nominating and voting rules, to wrest control back from all the new blood that was giving them a lot of money to sign up.
Typical Progs. They would prefer to burn it all down, rather than lose their total control over a system.
February 13th, 2017 at 2:21 am
I am voting “NO” on the bylaw changes.
While I may not disagree with ALL of the proposed changes, I disagree with a bunch of them. If they were offered as a series of individual yes/no votes, instead of just one package deal, I might have been willing to support some of them. Instead, I’m voting on all of them.
As far as the specific changes I object to, a lot of them come down to entrenching the power of the board, and making it significantly harder for the membership to retake control.
Given voting trends, the proposed changes would roughly triple the required number of signatures to get on the ballot. At $600 per life membership (I’ve seen it offered at that price within the last week), and factoring in that he would likely need a surplus of signatures, that would raise Bloomberg’s cost to fund a batch of nominators from roughly $250,000 to roughly $750,000.
Bloomberg spent over $20,000,000 in Nevada alone in the last election cycle. Anyone who thinks that the proposed bylaw changes would prevent someone like Bloomberg from putting forward a slate of candidates to the board is naive at best.
The simple fact of the matter is that the proposal to increase the number of signatures necessary to get on the board is not intended to stop people like Bloomberg, it’s intended to stop the small guys like Adam Kraut.
There’s also the matter of the elimination of the ability to amend bylaws at the NRAAM: On the whole, I think this is also a bad idea: While those pushing this change are correct that changes by mailed ballot are more “fair” and that bylaws haven’t been changed at an annual meeting in decades, that doesn’t change the point: It’s the easiest way to wrest control from the board in order to fundamentally change the direction of the organization. If this process hadn’t been possible in 1977 for the Cincinnati revolt, the NRA would not be the political juggernaut that it is today.
As for other candidates, I recommend voting for Adam Kraut: He’s a young pro-gun attorney from the greater Philadelphia area. If you’re looking for more information on him, I recommend checking out his website: http://www.adamkraut.com
February 13th, 2017 at 11:15 pm
It’s the recall provision that could cause more issues than the ballot if someone was willing to spend enough money. Buying your way onto the ballot is one thing, but that’s separate from actually winning. I think changing the recall provision is important.
And personally, I’m fine with indexing petition signatures to membership, and the proposed indexing does not create an insurmountable burden. I do not wish to speak ill of any candidate, and certainly not Adam Kraut, but its gotten way to easy for people with fairly shallow support to make ego runs for the Board. Even if they don’t win, they can dilute support for other candidates who aren’t consistently high vote getters and help push good people off. If they had raised the requirement to thousands of signatures, I’d agree it was too burdensome. But right now it’s too easy.
February 16th, 2017 at 12:48 am
@Sebastian:
The proposed bylaw changes are a mixed bag. Some of them I am entirely opposed to, others I am ambivalent towards, and others I favor.
That being said, since I have not been given the option of casting votes on each individual change, my only option to prevent the changes I view as destructive is to cast my vote as “NO” for the package as a whole.
It’s unfortunate, but I don’t see any better option.