December 1 marks the beginning of the new term for members of our Democratic Executive Committee. Next Monday, December 7, at 6pm, per our bylaws, we will hold our quadrennial organizational meeting, where we will hold elections for eight officer positions. If you are a voting member of the DEC, you should register for this meeting on Zoom so you can participate in the voting.
In order to ensure voting is kept to voting members, all other Democrats are invited to participate in this meeting by watching a livestream of the meeting on our YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/MiamiDadeDems).
Who can vote in this meeting?
Newly elected members of the body (elected in the August election), as well as Automatic members (Democratic members of the Florida legislature who live in Miami-Dade, as well as Democratic countywide elected officials), as well as Club and Caucus presidents. Contact information will be provided upon request to any member wishing to run for a position.
There are two important points to add here. First, in order to comply with the Florida Democratic Party’s (FDP) bylaws, we unanimously amended our own at the September meeting to state that all districts can be represented by one woman and one man per 1,000 Democrats.
Additionally, because of the well-documented disparities that exist with the current District system of the DEC bylaws, I have asked for, and received approval from the Florida Democratic Party to include all who qualified to run in August as elected members as well. Many of you have been following the issues surrounding our District system for some time, but for those who are not familiar, let me briefly outline why this change was important to make.
In 2019, the DEC voted to amend our bylaws to move from a precinct system to a district system. At the time, the bylaws of FDP based the size of DEC districts on registered voters and not registered Democrats, thus permitting GOP heavy areas to be overrepresented and Democratic heavy areas to be underrepresented. At that time, DEC leadership assured the body that it would work to change the bylaws at the state level to ensure the DEC was an accurate representation of Miami-Dade County Democrats. FDP did eventually change their bylaws to base the size of districts on registered Democrats and not all registered voters, but not before the seats for August 18 election were locked in under the flawed system, that could be said to have been against FDP bylaws. The Steering Committee and now FDP have both agreed that the most equitable way to increase representation is to allow all who qualified for the August election to be seated as elected members.
Who can run for a board position?
According to our bylaws, the officers of the DEC shall be drawn from the Elected Membership. You can see candidates who have decided to run for positions at this page on our website. Additionally, we will accept nominations from the floor during the meeting.
Sign up for email updates, and join us at county and local club meetings to learn how to get more involved.