>We hope that by having a city-specific delegate-selection meeting, we can >open up the city endorsement process to all eligible Minneapolis DFLers, >rather than those who knew enough to be elected delegates at >non-city-specific precinct caucuses 21 months before the city general >election. I applaud David for starting to move this issue forward. As a very active and still somewhat young DFLer I think it is ridiculous that we continue to exclude so many people from participating in our City Elections. Having just finished organizing the Ward 7 convention and working on a race in the 10th Ward. I can easily say we can do better. Right now we have a very mobile populace in MPLS, especially among younger residents who are the backbone of campaigns and hopefully the future of the MPLS DFL. By caucusing in the same year campaigns would be able to organize more people when they're actually aware there's a City Election going on, instead of 2 years before when nobody but a few insiders are paying attention to the upcoming race. It also focus attention on the City race, instead of using delegates who in all probability became delegates for a different candidate. A great example of this is in the 10th ward where almost all of the delegates were involved because of the State Rep race in 60B instead of for the 10th ward seat, an endorsement which they would ultimately decide. In fact only one of the 10th ward candidates was even in the race before the delegates caucused last year. The system of caucusing in the same year works extremely well in St. Paul and as anyone who's been paying attention to the St. Paul Mayoral race knows - it encourages campaigns to get out and organize people when they're paying attention to the race. Which is supposed to be what caucuses are all about. Mark Hinds Delegate - Ward 7 _______________________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - Minnesota E-Democracy Post messages to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Unsubscribe, Digest option, and more: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
