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Dee Ann's avatar

Hi — This is Dee Ann Poole. I’d like to clear up the confusion on the amendments. This is the official answer provided by Sophia Shore. It’s in her own words and is not edited in any way.

Clearing up confusion.

Everything that we did BEFORE we got to the platform is passed. The delegate, electors, etc.

Just like when the legislature is in session, when “bills” pass, we move on to the next bill, so it is in convention.

We got everything done except platform. The rules forced us to vote down platform, and then amend it. But we never passed the underlying document. Just like in the legislature, you have to pass the underlying bill “as amended.” You can’t just add amendments that aren’t attached to an underlying bill. The bill must be passed. Does that make sense?

You can’t object to a quorum call, because you have to have a quorum to do business. You can’t say, “hey we’re actually going to take a vote on whether we have quorum with those remaining & ignore the fact that the majority of the body isn’t here.”

I took the chair around 1:45ish. Broke for lunch & came back from lunch around 2:45pm. And did all of the business between 2:45pm and 7:45pm. Five hours.

If I would have taken the chair at 10:00am, I would have tightened lunch to an hour, and we would have been done by 4:00pm, 5:00pm TOPS.

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Donna in MO's avatar

I know the platform page on the MO GOP says '2023' but the way I understand it, the platform is only revised every 4 years, at the convention. So this is the 2020 platform: https://www.missourirepublicanassembly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/2020-Platform-Print-File-BJ-Printing2209.pdf

This is what will remain the platform until 2028, since there was not a quorum to pass a new one.

I did not know who Ben Baker was, but he did not say to leave - he did say around 7:00 PM that 'if you parked in the parking garage, you may want to move your car as the city may start towing cars' Sophia replied with 'do you know how long it takes to get a tow truck?' and laughed it off. But I was parked in the garage, and was getting nervous, so I did leave about 7:40, after the voting for the 'grassroots amendments' was completed, and there was only one remaining amendment to vote on. Quite a few others left the same time as me and I am pretty sure we had already lost the quorum. The trickle of people heading for the exits started turning into a flood. I was not sure that if I did leave to move my car, that I would be able to get back in, and by the time I left, moved my car (and there were very few options for parking as the other lot was for guests at the University Inn and was not sure it was OK to park there if you were not a guest) found a place to park, and walked back in, it very well could have been over in the first place.

Rookie mistake, I didn't even think about the quorum issue. But even if I had stayed, pretty sure the quorum was already lost sometime after 7 PM. The 'towing' threat was a lie. When I got to the garage it was nearly empty, and no tickets or tow trucks anywhere in sight.

I will also note that many of us were getting exasperated at the people who seemed to love going to the microphone, and nit-picking, and that some of the amendments were not well thought through. There was one that was intended to ban geoengineering/'chemtrails' but it was very poorly worded, and likely would include crop dusting, a ban of which would be a total non-starter in ag country. If the woman had done her research, she should have worded it to match the bill passed and signed in TN: https://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HB2063

The banning of owning MO land by any foreign entity was also poorly worded as there are currently businesses on land owned by companies not HQ in the US. I think the intent was farm land, and yet this amendment was a blanket statement.

Because of this, many of these amendments did require some vetting and cutting the discussion time to only 1 minute was just a 'we are tired and want to go home' move. The whole amendment issue was a mess, and I think the fact that this was a PLATFORM, not legislation, was lost on some people. The platform is only as good as our willingness to hold our elected people accountable to it, and I would venture a guess to say the average voter does not even know it exists. Yes, the 2024 platform https://drive.google.com/file/d/1CUuaOd1LDEkARLbsiSJtU4i2nR7z5Cqa/view had some holes in it, but this idea that we needed over 30 amendments was a stretch, think some people just wanted to put a stake in the ground for their pet issue. My opinion, this amendment fight was every bit as much a desire to pick a fight as it was a fight over the amendments. You can still advocate for any issue you wish even if it's not in the platform.

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