If You Are a Libertarian National Convention Alternate, PLEASE SHOW UP!

Susan Hogarth was just explaining the voting procedure:

Everyone, including delegates AND alternates, gets to vote.

If all the delegates from a state vote, then the alternates' votes don't count.

But if not all the delegates from a state vote, then the alternates' votes count in one of two ways:

1) If the state chose a "ranking" scheme, then the ranking alternates' votes count (i.e. two delegates don't vote; the top two ranked alternates' votes count); OR

2) Random alternates' votes are selected by the app for missing delegate votes.

As the convention drags on, there will likely be a number of delegates who get tired, or need a break, or whatever, and who miss votes.

So your alternate vote may very well make the difference. And you can do it from your computer/phone at home.

Brief Platform Committee / National Convention Update

In a few hours, the second "sitting" of the 2020 Libertarian National Convention will gavel to order, both in Orlando and online.

The party's platform committee had its final meeting yesterday. It was a bit of a technical clusterfuck insofar as it was similarly "hybrid" (some participants in a room in Orlando, some online), and fortunately nothing got done.

I say "fortunately" because the last couple of meetings have been all about attempts to get the committee to undo its own previously passed proposals based on "OH MY GOD, NO, WE CAN"T BE QUITE THAT LIBERTARIAN, SOMEONE MIGHT GET THE VAPORS!" responses to the member survey on those proposals.

That undoing actually got accomplished with respect to a proposal on doing away with government law enforcement. As of yesterday, I've signed onto a minority report on that proposal, the entire content of which is:

FUCK THE POLICE.

Why? Because stupidity and cowardice should incur costs that erase their perceived benefits.

Neutering a well-written, carefully crafted, thoroughly debated original proposal on the subject, just because some people might find it upsetting for the party to openly debate prospectively getting too libertarian, was stupid and cowardly.

So now there's a minority report to get announced from the stage, presumably upsetting the same people the proposal wreckers were trying to appease and therefore at least partially undoing the perceived benefit of the stupidity and cowardice.

Will future platform committees pay heed to that lesson and resist the temptation to become stupid and cowardly near the ends of their terms? I don't know. But hopefully that will be the case.

I Wonder ...

... how much paid-for travel demand is on the airlines' books, and what the effect of that will be on seat availability when most people decide that they need to -- and that it's safe to -- travel by air again?

When one airline canceled my May flight to Austin (for what was supposed to be the 2020 Libertarian National Convention) and I canceled the return flight with another airline (no need to fly back if I wasn't flying there), I ended up with some future flight credit (maybe not enough to ever redeem -- the flights were insanely cheap, and on airlines I don't normally use).

Tamara and the kids were going to fly this week, but decided at the last minute to drive instead, to make it less likely that they'll get caught up in some sudden and stupid interstate quarantine change. So now we've got a nice balance with the airline I usually fly on from that cancellation.

Public panics tend to end as suddenly as they begin. When this one ends, I expect that seat demand will quickly outstrip seat supply, meaning my credited balances won't go as far, if I can find a seat at all. For a little while, anyway.