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By Gail Travers | on March 18, 2022

To the Editor:

March 13 was the Ocean County Democratic Committee meeting and the annual mini-convention to nominate county and congressional candidates to appear on the party line for the primary ballot in June. It was quite an example of the people demanding democracy.

The Democratic leadership sent out notice of the meeting and most committee members received this postcard less than a week before the meeting. Also contained in this notice was an amendment to be voted on at this meeting. This amendment was to allow vote by mail (VBM) to be used for the election of the Democratic leadership, currently led by one of New Jerseys infamous bosses.

After reading the amendment, it seemed like dj vu, going back 12 years when Wyatt Earp did the same thing with extending the term of County Committee members and leadership from two to four years.He gave short notice about the meeting, including the fact that we would be voting on this amendment at the meeting/mini-convention.Its very sad that he didnt learn from that past experience where he failed to give members enough time to understand and digest all the implications of pushing through such an important amendment.

The current VBM amendment has so many loopholes and dangerous precedents that utilizing this voting method for a party election being controlled by the current leadership from the creation of the ballot to the counting and announcing the results opens up so many opportunities for fraud and deception. Its like putting the fox in the hen house.

I think we should have three meetings on this proposed amendment before adopting it. The first meeting should be the presentation of the amendment and the formation of a committee to develop the iron-clad procedures and send out a draft document to members. The second meeting should be for the appointed committee to present its results to the membership and get feedback. The third meeting could be to vote on the amendment. Thats what a responsible organization would do.

The scenario stated above is not what happened this past Sunday. We were not willing to just vote for this amendment without adequate vetting. Many committee members had valid questions.As a result, the chairman kept pushing back on us until a motion was made to table the discussion for a future date with follow-up containing air-tight procedures and controls before we would vote on such a major change in how we do business.

Leadership must understand that gone are the days of backdoor deals and ruling over political fiefdoms within our local Democratic organizations.We must continue to fight for participatory democracy within our County Committee. We are committed to winning this fight and our victory on Sunday is just a start.

Marianne P. Clemente, president

Barnegat Democrat Club

County Committee member

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Democracy in Action - The SandPaper