State Committee Minutes

10/3/2023

• Central Highlands
  • Chairman Fyke informed us that Emily Korns is stepping away from her position as the Regional Chair of the Central Highlands.
• Our next General Meeting is scheduled for October 16, 2023.
• Quorum
  • After the low attendance at our last State Committee meeting, it became clear that we needed to review membership & quorum requirements.
    • The members of the Executive Committee are automatically members of the State Committee.
    • The Chairman can appoint additional members of the state committee subject to an approval vote of the remaining members of the State Committee
    • County Chairs of each County that is officially organized.
  • Officially Organized County
    • The State Committee has not yet established the criteria for a County chapter to become officially organized. However, at a minimum, a County Chair, Secretary, & Treasurer should be identified. Furthermore, we should establish a rule that the Interim County lead attend the State Committee meetings for a period of time as a non-voting attendee.
  • We need to be sure that any members we add to the State Committee will have regular attendance at the meetings. We only managed a quorum at the last meeting by one vote & we had an action item in which time was of the essence—the endorsement of Bob Hollister for Lancaster County Commissioner.
  • Although the number of voting members needs to be watched closely, we should still encourage non-voting attendees to participation in these meetings as well.
• Resolution
  • Jack Marrit made a motion to authorize himself, Jack Merritt, also known as Jack A. Merritt, also known as John Merritt, also known as John A. Merritt, also known as John A. Merritt IV, to open a bank account with PNC Bank.
  • This motion was seconded by Benjamin Valimont. This motion was seconded followed by an overwhelming majority voting in favor of the motion.
• Voting
  • Secretary Valimont was concerned about the accuracy of hand counts. Upon review, the bylaws covers this concern:

Other votes shall be by show of hand unless any member of the Committee shall call for a roll call vote. 

• Communications
  • Brian made a request for more people to suggest ideas for social media posts.
  • The Communications Team is also starting to look at the requirements for political ads on Facebook & other social media.
• Priorities
  • We are still working on the issue of priorities versus platform. Whenever we make something a priority, we are telling the candidates we recruit or endorse that they must address the priorities. If we make too many, or too detailed, it will become a rigid platform that we are trying to avoid.
  • We should also be thinking about how our priorities will help us grow our party & not just how it effects candidates.
  • Right now, our priorities fall into two buckets:
    • Government Reforms
      • Ranked Choice Voting
      • Open Primaries
      • Independent Redistricting Commission
    • Societal Reforms
      • Environment & Energy
      • Healthcare
      • Economy
    • There was also a discussion that the issue of Safer Communities needs to be on this list somehow as well.

The video of the meeting can be found here:

https://youtu.be/IVsq6zOXMek