The objective first, since you're right that nobody forms a committee without one. It is narrow: the count as cast gets certified on time by the body whose job that is. In Washington the county canvassing board certifies 21 days after the election, and in Clark County that board is the auditor, the prosecuting attorney, and the council chair. Three people, one room, one date. That is a realizable target, and a committee can be built around it this week.
Second, "after the legal remedy runs out" covers less ground in a midterm than it sounds. For House seats, the last word doesn't belong to a court. Article I gives the House power to judge the elections of its own members, and contests go to the Committee on House Administration under the Federal Contested Elections Act. The final stage of a disputed seat is a political body voting by majority. So the gap I was pointing at is real and has a shape. It is the stretch between a bad or slow ruling and a vote by people who can be pressured. What can a committee do in that stretch that a party volunteer operation won't? Pack the room on canvass day and document everything, which the party operation will also do. Then, if a board refuses or a court sits on a case past the statutory deadline, occupy the auditor's office or the secretary of state's lobby and keep people there in shifts, with arrests if it comes to that. Party lawyers will advise against it, reasonably, because their job is to win in the forum they have standing in. After that there's the strike, and here I'll be plain about how far I can go. The leverage is in the unions. The people who run county government, in many places including the elections staff, are AFSCME and SEIU members. A political stoppage is illegal for public workers in most states and unprotected for private-sector workers under the NLRA. The West Virginia teachers struck illegally in 2018 and won in nine days. The Kolubara miners walked out in 2000 when Milošević's electoral commission tried to force a runoff after the first round, and the mine's shutdown is where the regime began to lose its footing. Neither case began with a crowd deciding on the spot. Both had people who had talked about it beforehand. I can't tell you any local in this country will do that in December. Probably none will. What I can say is that the question can't be put to a membership in the week after a bad ruling unless somebody has been putting it to them since October. A party operation won't raise it at all. A committee answerable to a local might raise it and lose the vote, and that would still be a decision made by the people who'd have to carry it out. Tony -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#43545): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/43545 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/121405050/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/13617172/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
