There has been a tonne of talk going on lately about the (un)fairness of the current GPO leadership race.  There are many concerns some of them valid some not so much.  One big concern is that people on the PE are campaigning for a candidate.  This can be seen as being very unfair but not everyone agrees.  So how do we move forward?  How do we get around this issue?

Campaigns are fun, everyone likes working on a campaign.  Party governance and organization on the other hand can be boring, very boring.  Also people keep citing the fact that the PC membership exploded during their contest and are worried that we wont get the same effect.  So why doesn't the PE have their own campaign?

This is my proposal.  Starting as soon as possible the PE should announce a membership drive for the leadership race.  The leadership candidates will no doubt be signing up new members to vote for them so we can sign up undecided members.

The PE, CA and any GPO members not already working on a campaign can start signing up members at $10.  You get 1 point for signing up a new member and half a point for renewing a lapsed member.

To make this more interesting we offer two prizes.  The region with the most points receives $2,500 and the CA with the most points also receives $2,500.

My hope is that this will solve some of the problems:

• We will increase membership which stops people from worrying that we wont.
• We will be keeping the PE busy with something other than the leadership contestants' campaigns.

This will also produce great gains for the party:

• We will be visibly more active.
• We will expand our volunteer/donor base.
• We will helping CAs train volunteers on how to sell the GPO to the general public.

I don't see how we can lose with this sort of campaign.  It's something I think we need to do, something that we need to start right away.