The vote on whether to allow earned voting membership in the Thurston County Democrats won’t happen next Monday, but rather at February’s central committee meeting. We’ll certainly discuss the idea, but not vote on it. There is a requirement for ten day notice for any bylaw change, which wasn’t met this month. Anyway, gives us more time to sharpen the idea.

Currently only Precinct Committee Officers can vote for anything in the central committee, the governing body. State law only requires them to vote for a limited amount of positions on the executive committee, making all other decisions by the central committee (like how to spend money and what positions to take on policy issues) open to a vote by a membership, if there is a membership. My idea was to give a vote on the central committee to folks who have “earned” it.
The debate on our PCO email list is continuing, with a handful of folks criticizing the idea by explaining how the PCO system is supposed to work. Neighborhood based organizations, with PCOs door belling and organizing their neighbors. Though, people hate answering the doors to strangers and neighborhoods ain’t what they used to be.

That’s not to say that people aren’t organized socially, in the way that neighborhoods were once the strongest of peoples’ social ties. We just have to recognize the more organic way people are organizing themselves nowadays, and it isn’t by neighborhood. It is through interests, social circles or any number of social ties.