Christy Jensen, formerly MDP Executive Director, has some criticism. I’ve heard the same silliness from others, and I think the criticism and my response both deserve a wider audience.
Here’s what Chair Barnes’ right hand from 2019 to 2025 has to say about my actions around the convention, and particularly about testing the geofencing system (from a Facebook reply):
Not your job to test the system. I can think of many reasons why the Chair declined to give you specifics on any rule enforcement. Whatever happened you had no license to lie on your ballot or encourage or fake authorize others to lie on their ballot. Even if you immediately reported you just colluded with someone to lie on their ballot. The party isn’t a toy for you to test or mess with. You are the only shady thing in this mess. The only thing proven is you will go to any length to get your name in the spotlight.
Here’s my response.
As a member of the MDP in good standing and an Officer of the State Central Committee it is absolutely my job to ensure leadership is implementing the rules appropriately. That’s one aspect of the job I was appointed to do. This is especially true when leadership has a deep and consistent history of not even trying to follow the rules, often deliberately breaking them.
Suggesting an officer of the SCC shouldn’t do that is literally crazy talk.
Note that I should have been elected.
7.1.1 Election of Officers: … The State Central Committee … shall elect a Secretary, Corresponding Secretary, Treasurer and such other officers as in its judgment may be proper. …
(emphasis added)
As far as I know, 7.1.1 has never been followed. Certainly it’s never been followed in the 10 years I’ve been here. The establishment appoints these officers, they don’t elect them.
Jensen knows all about violating this rule. In 2017 and 2019 I raised this object to the “way we’ve always done it”. In 2019 I met with Jensen before the State Central Committee meeting where these officers were to be selected by one method or the other. I showed Jensen the exact same rule you see above and highlighted “shall elect” and discussed it with her. She nodded and said not to worry, they’d follow the rules.
Then they didn’t.
Jensen lied to my face.
The “such other officers” line together with the appointments rather than elections is how the establishment nullifies the proportional representation minority coalitions are entitled to under the rules, and can win when SCC delegates are elected at Convention.
SCC delegates are elected proportionally. But by violating 7.1.1 and appointing “such other officers” instead of electing them, the establishment can add new SCC votes by simple majority rather than proportional voting. That changes the power split the election produced. A 60/40 result at Convention can be diluted to 70/30 or 80/20 or whatever the establishment wants, the rules don’t specify a limit to the number of “such other officers” (usually called “officers-at-large”). Typically they add between 80 and 100. We only elect 200 delegates at Convention, so that’s a major block of votes. That overturns the election and turns proportional voting at Convention into pure theater, cargo cult democracy.
In 2021, Jensen, Barnes, and their staff arranged to control the Zoom microphone (this was during covid, it was a virtual meeting) so that I couldn’t nominate the MISolidarity slate, and again just appointed Chair Barnes’ selection. I wrote about that here (video clips included). Notice in the linked article I was writing about many of the same problems we’re seeing today 5 years ago.
If Jensen had been doing her job properly for the six years she was being paid to, these things would have been fixed years ago. Jensen and Barnes were not in power to run a (small-d) democratic organization. They were in power to serve the establishment, not the 99% who do the work and cast the votes.
I tried to get Hertel to run it as an election rather than appointments in 2025, but he wouldn’t do it because the establishment network wouldn’t allow it. I think he personally would have followed the rules, but I don’t believe he was making that decision. Other people in the establishment demanded their people be appointed, and wouldn’t allow us to follow the rules and have an election. Jensen was probably in the same situation, but she never gave me the impression she had any problem with that1. Hertel hasn’t said so directly, but I do get the impression from him that he isn’t exactly happy about much of it. In 2025 we had no choice but to be blocked out or accept Chair Hertel’s rule breaking. We chose not to be blocked out. Effectively the same situation we were in 2017, which I wrote about here.
I’m sure Jensen doesn’t actually have a valid reason the Chair shouldn’t have given us basic information about geofencing. Because there isn’t one. That’s all we asked for, and all we got were obvious defensives lies.
I didn’t encourage anyone to lie on their ballot. I asked someone to help me conduct a very basic audit. This kind of audit happens all the time in banks and other security conscious environments: they have the system tested by people outside the security team. If they’re successful, they return the money/data/whatever with a report. I informed Chair Hertel and Parliamentarian Triplett that we had run the test and there was no geofencing in plenty of time to remove the vote if they wanted. Hertel looked down, and said he’d talk to the vendor. The SCC should ask for the contract and see if geofencing was included or not. It’s the kind of oversight the SCC is supposed to do. People who do these outside audits usually get paid very well. I did it for free.
Because I care about democracy and the integrity of our elections.
Why doesn’t Jensen or the establishment care about election integrity?
As I’ve written many times before, I don’t want to do any of this.
I want the Party to run according to the published rules, and I want those published rules to be as democratic as possible. Meaning the Party is governed by the members democratically from the grassroots up, not by anyone from the top down.
That’s literally all I’ve ever asked for since I got here.
Anything that comes of these press reports is 100% on Jensen and Barnes and Hertel and the rest of the establishment for constantly and continuously braking the rules and refusing to implement democratic reforms. I’ve literally been telling Jensen and everyone else in the establishment about these problems for 10 years and all Jensen and other establishment folks can do is whine and complain that this egregiously anti-democratic behavior is now being reported more widely and might cause problems.
The way to solve the problem is to run the Party democratically. Fairly.
According to published rules.
Doing anything else opens us to Republican attack.
Running the Party democratically protects us from those attacks.
The establishment would rather we be open to these attacks than allow us to run the Party democratically.
Because they don’t believe in democracy, they believe in maintaining their control.
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There has been one time Jensen and Barnes didn’t go along with the establishment. At the 2024 National Convention, they didn’t come after me for standing up for universal human rights they way my compatriot’s state party leadership went after them.
I’m grateful to them for that.
Antagonizing the auditors for uncovering a security breach -as well as other intimidation tactics over the years, tells us all we need to know about the undemocratic ways of the MDP. Thanks, Liano, for your diligence towards a more democratic and people-centered Party.