Link to the May 2020 Michigan Libertarian
By Greg Stempfle
The Libertarian Party of Michigan held its rescheduled national delegate selection convention on April 4th via Zoom video conference. This convention had previously been scheduled for March 14 in Grand Rapids but was postponed due to the corona virus outbreak. Planning for this event became a technical challenge as we navigated our way through a Zoom video conference and a separate polling platform. Most of the things we planned for went smoothly, a few others did not, and the usual unexpected problems happened as expected.
What worked well
With the Zoom video conferencing platform, we successfully:
- Credentialed 95 delegates to the convention.
- Allowed guest participation from several members of the LNC. This included opening remarks by Libertarian Party Chair Nick Sarwark, regarding the status of the national convention.
- Caucused by Congressional District in breakout rooms and elected five new district reps to the Libertarian Executive Committee (LEC).
Congratulations to the new LEC officers; District 2-Andrew Hall, District 4- Will Tyler White, District 5-James Harris, District 6-Shane Allen, and District 13-Andrew Chadderdon. There was a new vacancy in District 10 but technical problems prevented them from electing a new rep, however the LEC appointed Jim Fulner to this position at its April 19 LEC meeting.
Using the LimeSurvey polling platform, we successfully:
- Nominated 33 delegates and 44 alternates to the Libertarian National Convention.
- Endorsed two candidates for Michigan Supreme Court.
- Conducted a presidential preference poll using ranked choice voting.
Below are the results of each of the three polls we conducted.
Michigan Delegates to the 2020 Libertarian National Convention (33)
| Lisa Lane Gioia | Bill Gelineau | Tim Yow |
| Nepomuceno | Clair Gelineau | Andrew Hall |
| Nathan Hewer | Emily Salvette | Ben Reisterer |
| Andrew Chadderdon | Dana Carver | Wendi Parker |
| Ben Carr | Norm Peterson | Paul Vainer |
| Mike Saliba | Daniel Ziemba | Scotty Boman |
| Bill Hall | Larry Johnson | James Hudler |
| Eric Larson | Donna Gelineau | Matt Karshis |
| Jamie Lewis | Richard Hewer | Jay Gillotte |
| Vicki Hall | Katie Nepton | Jeff Pittel |
| Bob Broda | Patty Malowney | Ryan Roberts |
Michigan Ranked Alternates to the 2020 Libertarian National Convention (44)
| Donna Gundle Kreig | t13. Joe Hartman | t31. Shane Allen |
| t2. Griffin Hall | t17. Jim Fulner | t31. Jami Van Alstine |
| t2. Alexander Avery | t17. Brian Ellison | t33. Brenden Ellison |
| t2. Lawrence Ludlow | t17. Cat Filus | t33. Matthew Doak |
| t2. Luke Sciberras | t17. Todd Baker | t33. Rodger Young |
| t6. Aaron Miranov | t21. Jeff Wood | 36. Ron Acton |
| t6. Andy Evans | t21. James Weeks | t37. James Peace |
| t6. Pete Biskupski | t21. Frederick Horndt | t37. Samantha Allen |
| t9. Thomas Scott | t21. Will White | 39. David Holmer |
| t9. Leonard Schwartz | t21. Tim Orzechowski | t40. James Harris |
| t9. Luke Retterath | t21. Jim Dondero | t40. Brett Cashman |
| Greg Creswell | t27. Breanna Ellison | 42. Michael Hackman |
| t13. Marcy Larson | t27. John Jascob | 43. Shain Learner |
| t13. Nathan Mahn | t27. Morgan Johnston | 44. Brandon Warzybok |
| t13. Roderic Dolega | 30. Loel Gnadt |
Note 1: There are 11 ties in the alternate list. In fact, more people are tied than not tied. The LEC will ultimately be responsible for determining tie breakers, however we will not make any decisions until after the plans for the National Convention have been announced and all delegates have had time to reassess their options.
Note 2: There were a few typos on the ballot which have been corrected on the list above but not in the results spreadsheet in order to preserve the names as they appeared on the ballot.
Results of Supreme Court endorsement
Kerry Morgan 81 91.0% endorsed
Katherine Nepton 75 84.3% endorsed
None of the Above 3 3.4% not endorsed
Total Votes 159
Ballots Cast 89
Note: This is just an endorsement. The actual nomination will be made at our July 18, 2020 state convention in Gaylord.
Results of Presidential Preference Poll using Ranked Choice Voting
The results of ranked choice elections are not so straightforward to report. It took seven rounds of ballot preferences before someone achieved a majority. The final preference was…
Jacob Hornberger 33 53.2%
Justin Amash (write-in) 23 37.1%
None of the Above 6 9.7%
The last candidate to be dropped before anyone received a majority was Vermin Supreme.
The results were calculated using two different methods, both of which produced the same result. In the final round there were 19 exhausted ballots, if “none of the above” was counted as a candidate and eliminated after round one. If “none of the above” was allowed to reappear on each round of balloting, as it would play out at a convention, there would be 13 exhausted ballots and 6 votes for “none of the above”. The results using both methodologies as well as raw results are included in the linked spreadsheet. Please feel free to check our math! I would to thank Hugh McNichol IV from RankMiVote for his assistance with this tabulation.
Link to “LPM Convention LimeSurvey results 2020-04-04.xlsx”
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1o1a5vIeo4-OKOa3Phf3hitPFibz3GTlw
Convention Video
During credentialing, our attempt to live stream the convention to Facebook caused the platform to crash. However, the convention was recorded and posted to YouTube the following day.
The convention was called to order at 12:31 pm EDT and adjourned at 5:11 pm for a total time in session of 4 hours 40 minutes. The video recording begins 3 minutes after the convention was called to order, right after Nick Sarwark was given the floor.
What didn’t work well, at least from my point of view
- Convention chair and video conference host need to be separate roles.Only the host can let people out of the waiting room and assign people to breakout rooms. Having to do this was distracting at times and I should have had someone assisting me. Several people did offer to help me in person, but because I work as a medical technologist at Henry Ford Hospital Detroit, I am more likely to have been exposed to the covid-19 virus than your average person and didn’t want to put anyone at risk.
- Use screen sharing to list candidates nominated for office/delegate.This was so obvious in hindsight and the only part I feel like we went about something wrong. Nobody thought to have the names typed into a shared screen. I apologize to our LimeSurvey Manager, Andrew Chadderdon, and Secretary, Wendi Parker, for making their jobs harder than necessary and to those whose names were misspelled on the ballot. We could have saved a lot of time had we all been able to see the list being created in real time.
Issues with Zoom as a platform
- Only a subset of participants are visible at any given time.
The host can only see 25 screens at a time, and even fewer people on both the participant list and the list of people to choose from when assigning breakout rooms. This makes it hard to gauge the convention body at once. The participant list is often only partially alphabetized which makes it even harder to find people.
- Breakout rooms are useful but not user friendly to manage.
Breakout room assignment is difficult to do with large groups. Also, the list I pre-printed to help me assign people to congressional district caucuses was in alphabetical order by last name but Zoom alphabetizes participants by their first name (or user name).I keep thinking of ways to make an online convention work better before reminding myself I hope this never happens again. Nonetheless, we are now better prepared to handle any contingency with the national convention.I’d like to give special thanks to Andrew Chadderdon for managing the LimeSurvey platform, to Larry Johnson, Jeff Pittel, and Norm Peterson for handling this unique registration and credentialing, and most importantly to Convention Committee Chair Jamie Lewis for overseeing this entire process. Planning this convention took many twists and turns and in the end, we all came together to pull off a successful convention under an unprecedented situation in the history of party and country.
