This morning my wife and I attended the Democratic county convention. The main purposes of the convention are to nominate delegates to the district and state conventions, and to adopt a platform to be submitted for inclusion in the state party platform. It’s also a place for candidates and activists to show up and meet the party faithful. Any elected official or candidate who bothers to show up (or send someone to speak for them) is introduced to the full convention from the podium.
The energy level this year was higher than the last time we attended. Part of that was that the convention was held at a smaller venue, so the people there to campaign had less room to operate. A larger part is that North Carolina’s primary is relevant this year, and Democrats are hopeful of making gains just about everywhere thanks to their success in recent elections. As delegates arrived, they were mobbed by people eager to get them to sign up for things, put stickers on their shirts, and generally submit to campaigning. This is the sort of thing that’s ordinarily frustrating but is actually kind of fun when you’re at an event designed for that purpose.
The Hillary Clinton campaign had a larger official presence at the convention than the Barack Obama campaign, but based on applause and stickers on shirts, I’d say Obama supporters outnumbered Clinton supporters three to one. For the North Carolinians out there, it sure looks like Lieutenant Governor Bev Perdue is going to carry Wake County by a large margin over Richard Moore. I’m probably going to vote for Moore in the primary, though. I should also note that my friend who works for the Department of Labor recommends that Democrats vote for Robin Anderson for Labor Commissioner in the primary.
Once all of the politicians have been introduced, the convention gets down to working on the resolutions. The resolutions are a set of political positions that the county feels the state party should adopt. A separate committee writes the list of resolutions, and then they’re presented to the convention for adoption. Every year they put forward a motion to adopt them all in one big batch, and every year there are people who have problems with the resolutions, and want to debate them individually. The catch is that most everyone else just wants to go home. So there’s a series of motions and other parliamentary shenanigans involved with trying to get the resolutions debated and with trying to end debate and move the convention along.
The funny thing is that the resolutions serve very little purpose in actually changing the laws. Wake is just one county in North Carolina and North Carolina is just one state of 50. It’s kind of frustrating to sit through lengthy debates on this issues, but at the same time it’s heartening to see people really engaged on this issues (even if many of them seem to misunderstand them). In the end, all of the resolutions are acted upon and the convention is adjourned.
One of the best takeaways from the county convention is the reminder that even though the party is divided by the Presidential primary, most everyone is working toward a similar set of goals, and there are a lot more elections being contested than just the one for President.
If you sympathize with a political party, I’d strongly encourage you to get involved at the precinct level and maybe make it to a county convention. It’s an entertaining way to be educated.
How law schools juke the stats
I’m particularly interested in performance metrics and statistics and how they are used and manipulated. One of my favorite terms from The Wire was “juking the stats” — manipulating the crime statistics for political reasons, usually be reclassifying felonies as lesser crimes to make the felony rate appear lower. Any quantitative system for measuring progress toward a goal provides the opportunity for juking the stats, and the challenge for creators of such systems is to be aware of these methods and account for them.
Michael Froomkin posts about a statistic law schools are measuring — attrition of students after their first year, and how that statistic can be interpreted. In his comments, he describes the incentive for top tier law schools to admit fewer first year law students and accept more students as transfers after the first year. This enables them to cherry pick the best students and increase their bar passage rate, which is one of the metrics applied by the all important (but dubiously accurate) US News rankings.
Expect more posts on juking the stats in the future.