electing delegates for a February national convention

[Joe Dehn]

The LPC has had an annual convention every year since 1973.  They have been held most commonly in February but sometimes in March, April, or May, and one time (this past one) in July. (For the actual dates, see: https://lpedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_of_California#Conventions) However, this is not a rule, in our bylaws or anywhere else.

The national convention was usually held in the summer or fall of an odd-numbered year until 1996 when it was switched to late spring or summer of even-numbered years.  Either way, there was normally a state convention somewhere between three and seven months prior to each national convention, at which our delegates to the national convention could be elected.

Now the LNC has decided to hold the 2028 national convention in February.  Obviously we can't hold our state convention that same weekend, or even that same month -- it would be a conflict in too many ways. We could potentially hold it in January, and attempt to get our delegate list submitted in time, or postpone our convention until later that year with our national delegates having already been elected during the previous year. But if we did that at our usual time, that might put the selection almost a year in advance.  Other possibilities would be to hold our 2027 convention significantly later that year, hold our "2028" convention in late 2027 (and not have one actually in 2028), have a special convention just for this purpose in the second half of 2027, or come up with some totally different process for selecting our national delegates.

There are pros and cons to all of these approaches.  It would also be nice to come up with an approach that would work generally, regardless of when the national convention is held (e.g., if the LNC decides to schedule some future convention in March, or November.  Most of these approaches would require at least some adjustment to our rules, if only to deal with references to "year" that might no longer make sense -- allowing for a special convention or electing the national delegates without a convention would require a lot more.

[June Genis]

I think it would be best to hold a special convention just to elect delegates at a fixed amount of time before the next national convention. It would only need to be a one day convention and hopefully scheduled someplace that would require at most a one night hotel stay for some people. 

Next best would be to hold our official 2028 convention in 2027 but that leaves open what to do about the official 2027 convention.

June

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[Wesley Martin]

I would vote to have our convention a month earlier in 2028. My reasoning behind this is consistency. I may be completely out of line here, but the LNC hasn't been very consistent. Is there any indication that this will be the norm from here on out? I would wait it out and see if the move to February sticks before we make any alterations to a working schedule. You never know, there might be such backlash to a February LNC convention that they never want to have one again.

What's the timeline for delegate submittal? Do we have to submit delegates 30 days in advance?

Wesley

[Joe Dehn]

On 2025-11-17 13:21, Wesley Martin wrote:

I would vote to have our convention a month earlier in 2028. My reasoning behind this is consistency. I may be completely out of line here, but the LNC hasn't been very consistent. Is there any indication that this will be the norm from here on out? I would wait it out and see if the move to February sticks before we make any alterations to a working schedule. You never know, there might be such backlash to a February LNC convention that they never want to have one again.

 

I mostly agree with this.  I do not think we should assume that the LNC -- whoever happens to make up the LNC four years from now, eight years from now, and so on -- will stick with February.  Best would be if we could come up with rules for how we schedule our conventions that will work with a variety of scenarios.  It may not be possible to deal with every possibility that way, but we should at least try to provide some flexibility.

 

What's the timeline for delegate submittal? Do we have to submit delegates 30 days in advance?

 

Not really.  Under current national rules (which could of course themselves change between now and 2028, through amendment at the upcoming 2026 convention), we are required to submit a delegate list one month prior to the convention. However, it does not need to be the actual delegate list.  We could submit a placeholder list and then "amend" it, even to something completely different, pretty much any time up to the day before the convention.

 

The much bigger problems that I see with scheduling our convention too close to the national convention have to do with convenience for our delegates. Many people who are considering attending the national convention may prefer, in some cases very strongly prefer, to know whether they will be going as voting delegates before they make their travel plans, or commit to any of the associated expenses, especially airfare.  Some people may want to go regardless of their voting status, to enjoy other aspects of the convention, but the people who care mostly about the formal convention business may not be happy having to make their travel arrangements without knowing.  There may also be people who would find two conventions in adjacent months too much, e.g, with respect to work/business/family obligations, and feel forced to choose to attend one or the other but not both.

 

But having our convention in January, no later than the middle of January, is at least one possibility that I think we should talk about, and allow for in any bylaws amendment we may propose on this subject.

 

 

 

Wesley

On Tuesday, October 21, 2025 at 9:10:20 AM UTC-7 June Genis wrote:

I think it would be best to hold a special convention just to elect delegates at a fixed amount of time before the next national convention. It would only need to be a one day convention and hopefully scheduled someplace that would require at most a one night hotel stay for some people. 

 

Next best would be to hold our official 2028 convention in 2027 but that leaves open what to do about the official 2027 convention.

 

June

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On Tue, Oct 21, 2025 at 9:04 AM Joe Dehn <jw...@dehnbase.org> wrote:

The LPC has had an annual convention every year since 1973.  They have been held most commonly in February but sometimes in March, April, or May, and one time (this past one) in July. (For the actual dates, see: https://lpedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_of_California#Conventions) However, this is not a rule, in our bylaws or anywhere else.

The national convention was usually held in the summer or fall of an odd-numbered year until 1996 when it was switched to late spring or summer of even-numbered years.  Either way, there was normally a state convention somewhere between three and seven months prior to each national convention, at which our delegates to the national convention could be elected.

Now the LNC has decided to hold the 2028 national convention in February.  Obviously we can't hold our state convention that same weekend, or even that same month -- it would be a conflict in too many ways. We could potentially hold it in January, and attempt to get our delegate list submitted in time, or postpone our convention until later that year with our national delegates having already been elected during the previous year. But if we did that at our usual time, that might put the selection almost a year in advance.  Other possibilities would be to hold our 2027 convention significantly later that year, hold our "2028" convention in late 2027 (and not have one actually in 2028), have a special convention just for this purpose in the second half of 2027, or come up with some totally different process for selecting our national delegates.

There are pros and cons to all of these approaches.  It would also be nice to come up with an approach that would work generally, regardless of when the national convention is held (e.g., if the LNC decides to schedule some future convention in March, or November.  Most of these approaches would require at least some adjustment to our rules, if only to deal with references to "year" that might no longer make sense -- allowing for a special convention or electing the national delegates without a convention would require a lot more.

 

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[Mike Van Roy]

Hi all

I agree with what everyone has said. Volatility with national scheduling is indeed making things problematic for the states with their scheduling. This is an issue we need to address.

That being said, I'm not sure that a bylaw amendment wouldn't make things worse. It would be like pegging a country's currency to another country's currency. It would either make both currencies (relatively) stable or both volatile. We could be locking ourselves into the national scheduling volatility.

If we're going to pursue that, I suggest that the bylaw stipulate that LPCA have our convention X months before the LNC convention in convention years and either allow for flexibility in the off years so we don't have a 6 month term followed by an 18 month term OR we keep generally winter for our off-year conventions.

MIke Van Roy

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[Mimi Robson]

I think the only reason we would need a bylaw amendment is if we decided to have a special convention/meeting specifically to elect convention delegates.  If we DID do that, we could conceivably hold that special convention remotely so the party doesn't have to spend extra money on a meeting room, and the membership doesn't have to pay to go to an additional meeting. I am not sure I like the idea of doing that, but if we decide to do it we would have to do it at the convention coming up in February.

I think the idea that makes the most sense (at least to me) is that we hold our 2027 convention a bit later in the year.  Although we've typically had our conventions in February, we have also had it in April several times (as recently as 2019).  We also held it in May in 2021 because of issues with Covid, and of course in July this year.  If we had the convention, say in June or July we could select our delegates then.  And then we could plan our 2028 convention after the national convention (maybe in May or June again).  

Doing that we wouldn't need to change any of our rules, because our bylaws don't say anything other than we are required to have a convention once a year (which I would take to mean, once a calendar year).

Mimi

[Starchild]

This makes sense to me too – just have the 2027 LPC convention later in the year, and select our national delegates then.

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

 

 

Wesley

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On Tue, Oct 21, 2025 at 9:04 AM Joe Dehn <jw...@dehnbase.org> wrote:

The LPC has had an annual convention every year since 1973.  They have been held most commonly in February but sometimes in March, April, or May, and one time (this past one) in July. (For the actual dates, see: https://lpedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_Party_of_California#Conventions) However, this is not a rule, in our bylaws or anywhere else.

The national convention was usually held in the summer or fall of an odd-numbered year until 1996 when it was switched to late spring or summer of even-numbered years.  Either way, there was normally a state convention somewhere between three and seven months prior to each national convention, at which our delegates to the national convention could be elected.

Now the LNC has decided to hold the 2028 national convention in February.  Obviously we can't hold our state convention that same weekend, or even that same month -- it would be a conflict in too many ways. We could potentially hold it in January, and attempt to get our delegate list submitted in time, or postpone our convention until later that year with our national delegates having already been elected during the previous year. But if we did that at our usual time, that might put the selection almost a year in advance.  Other possibilities would be to hold our 2027 convention significantly later that year, hold our "2028" convention in late 2027 (and not have one actually in 2028), have a special convention just for this purpose in the second half of 2027, or come up with some totally different process for selecting our national delegates.

There are pros and cons to all of these approaches.  It would also be nice to come up with an approach that would work generally, regardless of when the national convention is held (e.g., if the LNC decides to schedule some future convention in March, or November.  Most of these approaches would require at least some adjustment to our rules, if only to deal with references to "year" that might no longer make sense -- allowing for a special convention or electing the national delegates without a convention would require a lot more.

 

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[Joe Dehn]

On 2025-12-04 18:17, Starchild wrote:

This makes sense to me too – just have the 2027 LPC convention later in the year, and select our national delegates then.

 

 

This is something for which I had assumed we would want to develop a proposal, but it turned out that nobody offered any actual proposal.  I could myself imagine several new mechanisms that might be applicable, and considered trying to write one or more of them up, but the more I thought about them the more it seemed to me that they could create new issues that would have been very difficult to address.

 

I agree that dealing with the 2028 case by having the 2027 convention mid-year would be a reasonable approach. We could also have the 2028 convention in January. Both of those would create some inconvenience for some people, but until we see evidence that future national conventions are going to be held regularly in February, I'd rather go with either of those as a way to deal with this particular case, rather than try to come up with something completely different that might create even worse problems.

 

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[Starchild]

This isn’t a Bylaws matter, is it? Doesn’t the ExCom or the Convention Committee select the convention dates?

Love & Liberty,

((( starchild )))

LPC Bylaws Committee member

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[Joe Dehn]

On 2025-12-05 01:28, Starchild wrote:

This isn't a Bylaws matter, is it? Doesn't the ExCom or the Convention Committee select the convention dates?

 

Correct -- that's the way it is now.

 

However, it potentially could have become a "bylaws matter", if we had decided some change to the bylaws would help. For example, somebody might have wanted to propose the the EC be required to schedule our convention a certain amount of time before the national convention, in years when there is a national convention. Somebody might have wanted to add a provision to allow national delegates to be selected at a special convention.

 

But nobody did.

[Mike Van Roy]

Most county affiliates have it in their county bylaws that they will have their annual meeting / elections the month before the LPCA convention. Most county affiliates "go dark" in December rather than try to plan an organization meeting that most people couldn't attend anyway. So that's an obstacle a potential January LPCA convention has to consider.

Mike

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[Joe Dehn]

On 2025-12-05 11:01, 'Mike Van Roy' via LPCalifornia Bylaws Committee Discussion wrote:

Most county affiliates have it in their county bylaws that they will have their annual meeting / elections the month before the LPCA convention.

 

 

I do not believe this is true. I know that we (Santa Clara County) have never had such a requirement in our bylaws.

 

There are copies of many county bylaws on the state web site. I just skimmed through them and found only four (out of 21 posted there) that had such a requirement.  (Two of them were Alameda and Contra Costa, which it is easy to understand might have similar requirements, since they were historically the same "region". Possibly that's where you got the impression that this is a common feature.)

 

Many don't say anything at all about when their annual / elections meeting must be held.

 

But I found several that say it cannot be held in the month (30 days) before the state convention.

 

And even a couple that require that it be held in January, specifically!

 

 

[Mike Van Roy]

Yes, I was thinking of Alameda specifically since I'm Alameda.

In fact moving this past convention to the summer forced us into a bylaws violation no matter what we did.

Mike

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[Mike Van Roy]

And I think that's exactly why we didn't want to deal with this through the bylaws. Instead of creating a rule to deal with the uncertainty coming from LNC a bylaws approach would have locked us into​ that uncertainty without actually controlling it. Flexibility is better for now.

Mike

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