More on the NRA election
In comments, HSR47 writes:
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, Im 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 (Ive 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 Bloombergs 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, its intended to stop the small guys like Adam Kraut.
Theres 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 havent been changed at an annual meeting in decades, that doesnt change the point: Its the easiest way to wrest control from the board in order to fundamentally change the direction of the organization. If this process hadnt been possible in 1977 for the Cincinnati revolt, the NRA would not be the political juggernaut that it is today.
Honestly, I see pros and cons to both sides and am still undecided.
February 14th, 2017 at 2:06 pm
I voted against it too, following Jeff Knox and David Codrea’s advice.