Libertarian Party of Florida Convention Motions, Part 2: Constitution and Bylaws

I've previously posted my recommendations regarding platform proposals for next month's Libertarian Party of Florida state convention. This post is on the party's Constitution and bylaws. The proposals are posted here.

I do not envy the committee members who are charged with trying to straighten out LPF's Constitution and bylaws, and there's really only one proposal I have a big problem with.

The existing language:

The Executive Committee shall fill vacancies of elected positions of LPF Chair, LPF Vice Chair, LPF Secretary, LPF Treasurer, and Directors at Large as indicated by a majority of the votes cast by the Executive Committee via roll call vote.

The proposed change:

The presiding officer shall appoint a qualified and willing LPF member to fill any vacant office or seat. The appointee shall be vested immediately with the duties and powers of the office.

Do I even have to explain why that's a dangerous idea? Let me know. Other than that, there aren't really any changes I can't live with, but:

When I first began getting involved with LPF a couple of years ago and looked at the Constitution and bylaws, my first reactions were:

1. Jesus, what a mess; and
2. These two things should be one thing; and
3. What LPF needs is a committee/process to create an entirely new set of bylaws (superseding the existing bylaws and subsuming the extraneous "Constitution") to be adopted in one swell foop.

I haven't seen any reason to change that opinion.

Unfortunately, the route there may be via a sort of "nuclear option."

Last weekend, LPF's executive committee voted, with only one "no" vote from Paul Stanton, to surrender to Augustus Invictus, the leader of an authoritarian nationalist hostile takeover attempt of LPF, agreeing to "mediation" of his manufactured complaints in lieu of seeing if he was serious in his threats of frivolous/malicious litigation.

This hostile takeover attempt is now in its third year. It's time to bring it to an end, and the first step in doing so is to replace each and every executive committee member who betrayed his or her fiduciary duty to the party and threw its members under the bus with this appeasement of the party's enemies.

If that doesn't happen, it will be time to ask the Libertarian National Committee to disaffiliate LPF and create a libertarian political party to replace what is fast becoming a front organization for fascist opportunists.

Disaffiliation would, of course, be a direct route to fixing the bylaws/Constitution situation. But it's far from the best route.