This is a quick summary of what took place at the just-concluded 2006 Libertarian Party of California state convention and Executive Committee meeting. (The detailed meeting minutes will follow later.)

Starting on Friday night, a written set of Convention Reports from various LPC officers and committee chairs was distributed to attendees; it is available at http://snurl.com/lpcsec . It delineates achievements over the past year along with many goals for the coming year.

The Bylaws, Platform, and Program Committees met on Saturday, while most convention delegates took the opportunity on Saturday to do some sight-seeing and shopping in Ensenada.

There were 91 credentialed delegates for the Sunday business meeting. The Platform Committee proposed six changes, with the following results: (1) A paragraph opposing the issuance of state drivers licenses was added to the Licensing plank. (2) The Election Reform plank was modified to also advocate the use of voter-verification systems using paper outputs for vote counting. (3) A proposal that persons accused of crimes should be able to compel witnesses to appear was defeated. (4) The "Draft" plank was renamed "Military" and wording was added opposing the deployment of the National Guard beyond the boundaries of the U.S. absent a declaration of war, and also supporting the creation of volunteer militias independent of the National Guard. (5) A proposal calling for a moratorium on the death penalty was defeated. (6) Wording was added to the Marriage plank advocating that until California ends its involvement in marriage, the state should issue marriage licenses to any adults without regard to gender.

In Executive Committee elections: Mark Johnson, Richard Newell, Don Cowles, M Carling, and Angela Keaton were elected to two-year terms, and Zander Collier was elected to a one-year term. There wasn't time to hold elections for alternates, so the Executive Committee subsequently elected Lois Garcia as the first alternate and John Eckl as the second alternate.

Mark Hinkle, Bob Weber, Allen Hacker, Camden McConnell, and Marc Solomon were elected to the Judicial Committee (Marc was originally tied with John Eckl for the fifth slot and won a run-off election). The Judicial Committee chose Mark Hinkle as its Chair.

The convention elected en masse as California delegates to the 2006 national convention a list of 80 proposed names which were submitted to the Secretary. That list is available at http://snurl.com/lpcsec. Since the California delegation has 212 slots available for the national convention, it is extremely likely that any other member from California who wishes to attend will be seated as an Alternate with full voting power.

The Bylaws Committee report is available at http://snurl.com/lpcsec. Proposals 1 through 9, which were mostly language clean-up items, passed as written. A new Proposal 9a was adopted which re-inserts a Bylaw supporting write-in votes for candidates seeking the LP nomination in a primary election. Proposal 10, which would haved added additional restrictions against LPC expenditures for federal candidates (to reduce our BCRA risk and give us a chance to challenge it in court), was defeated. Proposal 11, to conform membership incentives to the fact that the Unified Membership Plan with the national LP has ended, passed. Proposal 12, to establish a year-around Program Committee which can propose Program changes at any time (with a 2/3 vote by the Executive Committee needed for approval) passed (with very minor amendments). Proposal 13, to discourage LNC representatives and alternates from missing too many meetings, passed. Proposal 14, to eliminate the self-executing nature of Bylaw 5, Section 10 and instead require a 2/3 vote of the Executive Committee in all cases to suspend a person's LPC membership, passed. Proposal 15, to require only a majority of votes rather than a majority of eligible positions to pass an Executive Committee motion, failed. Time ran out for considering additional proposals.

The 2005 Program will continue in effect until the newly-configured Program Committee comes up with changes.

A resolution was passed opposing Proposition 82, the "California Preschool For All Act". A resolution advocating that future conventions only take place within California, and that no fees every be required for members to vote on party business, was amended by substituting a resolution expressing appreciation for the 2006 state convention; the amended resolution failed. A "Resolution Regarding The War In Iraq" failed. A "Non-Interventionist Resolution" failed.

The convention endorsed all of the LPC candidates running for statewide offices, as well as the candidates running for Board of Equalization districts.

At the Executive Committee which immediately followed the convention, the minutes of the November 19, 2005 meeting were approved. Those minutes have been posted on the LPC web site at http://www.ca.lp.org/cat_minutes.shtml.

The Executive Committee re-appointed Aaron Starr, Willard Michlin, Daniel Wiener, Ted Brown, and M Carling to the Operations Committee.

M Carling and Aaron Starr were re-elected as the Libertarian National Committee regional representatives. Richard Burke and Scott Lieberman were elected as 1st and 2nd alternates, respectively.

The preliminary budget for 2006 which had been adopted at the November 19, 2005 meeting (see the above-referenced minutes) was ratified with one inconsequential change.

The existing working committees were extended until at least the end of the next ExCom meeting. The time and place (in northern California) for the next meeting will be decided at a later time.

Daniel Wiener

CA_Secretary@LibertarianParty.info

P.S. The above http://snurl.com/lpcsec address is a shortcut to the Secretary's Yahoo Briefcase. Yahoo is often very flaky, so try refreshing several times if you have trouble bringing up the web page.

Secretary Daniel Wiener's Summary of 2006 California Libertaian Party Convention