Three Simple Reasons to Support One Member, One Vote
Convention is fast approaching! Soon, delegates and members from all across the country will come to Chicago to discuss, debate, and ultimately vote on what direction our organization will take over the next two years. Delegates will be asked to weigh in on a huge number of resolutions, amendments, and candidates, so it’s important to get clarity on what exactly is being debated and the arguments used by each side of the debate.
One of the most potentially impactful resolutions that will be debated this August is CB02, a proposal endorsed by both Groundwork and Socialist Majority Caucus. This resolution would overhaul DSA’s current election system for national leadership positions to be based on a “One Member, One Vote” (or 1M1V) basis, rather than on the current convention delegate system. I want to lay out what I think are the best reasons to support this resolution in a quick, easily-digestible (and certainly non-exhaustive!) article, so that any delegates struggling to wrap their heads around all the decisions being made at convention can get an idea of the case for 1M1V.
Ultimately, this resolution is a major step towards making our organization more democratic and responsive to our working-class base—and as the Zohran Mamdani campaign has shown us, that’s where the future of DSA lies!
But before we get into the reasons for members and delegates to support 1M1V, I wanted to provide a brief explanation of the current system.
What is One Member, One Vote?
Every two years, DSA holds its national convention. Chapters from around the country elect delegates as their representatives, and the number of delegates is (roughly) proportional to the size of the chapter they represent. These delegates are the ones who vote on resolutions and amendments, and, crucially for this resolution, they also vote for which candidates get to be in national leadership positions, including the two National DSA co-chairs, the rest of the National Political Committee (NPC), and the co-chairs of the National Labor Commission (NLC).
What this means is that national leadership is not directly elected by DSA members. Instead, members vote within their chapters for delegates, and then those delegates go to convention to vote for national leadership.
The 1M1V resolution wants to reform the way we do these national leadership elections. Instead of members voting for delegates who then get to vote for national leadership, 1M1V would cut out the middleman and allow all members to vote on national leadership positions. All members in good standing would receive an electronic ballot, where they can vote for who they think should be on the NPC.
So now we know what 1M1V is—but why should we as members and delegates support it?
1. One Member, One Vote deepens members’ connections with the organization.
DSA just recently crossed the absolutely staggering threshold of 80,000 members (read that again—80,000! That’s nearly two Liechtensteins!), and who knows how many new members we’re likely to get as a result of Zohran Mamdani’s historic victory in New York City. But how many of those members can name a single member on the NPC? Better yet, how many of them know what the NPC is? How many know about what the national organization is up to at any given time?
The answer to all these questions is almost certainly a tiny minority of members. In large part, that’s because ordinary rank-and-file members never really interact with anything national DSA is doing, apart from maybe reading the occasional tweet. It’s exceptionally time—and energy-consuming for many members to even figure out what decisions the NPC is making at any given time, let alone figuring out whether they think those decisions are good or bad.
Members are disconnected from the workings of our national leadership in large part because they’re disconnected from the process of choosing our national leadership. Candidates for national leadership positions know that they can win their elections by connecting only with a small core of delegates, so they’re not incentivized to engage with the broader membership. Under 1M1V, candidates would know that their only way to get elected would be to appeal to all of our members—they would have to reach out to our membership and communicate their vision for where DSA should go.
This deepens the connection between membership and national leadership in two ways. Members become more connected because they get to see firsthand what decisions are being made and what direction we’re going in, and they see their own voice and vision represented in national leadership. This, in turn, would produce much more buy-in and involvement in national DSA campaigns, since members would know that those campaigns were chosen based on their votes. And on the other side, national leadership becomes more connected with our membership, and gets a much greater sense for what the majority of members, rather than a handful of ideologically committed delegates, want. It’s a win-win!
2. One Member, One Vote makes our voting more economically just.
When I was first considering whether to run for delegate in my chapter, I discussed it with a mentor of mine who’s been involved in socialist organizing since before I was born. I expressed my worry that someone more qualified might be better, and that I should let someone else fill the role. He promptly set me straight—“being a delegate isn’t something you get to do,” he told me, “it’s something you’re doing for others, for other people who aren’t able to be a delegate.”
For all the reward of being a delegate, it’s undeniably hard work (just read David Duhalde's piece on convention history). And not only hard work, but expensive work. Firstly, there are the monetary costs: a hotel, transit to Chicago, food while at convention, transit back from Chicago—these costs can easily run into the thousands of dollars! Thankfully, DSA has means by which delegates can get help with these expenses—but what about the time costs? Lots of people don’t work a job that allows them to get time off to come to convention. What about folks with young kids? Or caregivers for disabled family members? We socialists should know better than anyone that free time is a luxury of which so many workers are systematically deprived.
The simple fact is that a lot of DSA members—potentially the majority of members—simply don’t have the economic means to be able to be a delegate. Our current election system effectively relegates these members to a second-class membership status. Can’t afford to become a delegate? Then no national leadership voting for you! You’ll just have to hope there’s someone in your chapter who is able to become a delegate who shares your vision and goals for the organization. And if you can’t find someone who shares your vision? Too bad, so sad.
Under 1M1V, every member, regardless of economic status, would have an equal say in our national leadership elections. No one would be too poor or too time-constrained to have a say in who gets to lead the organization. This, I argue, is solidarity in action.
3. One Member, One Vote is more democratic!
In every DSA space I’ve been in, there’s been a push to harmonize our internal principles (the way we run things inside DSA) with our external principles (the way we think society should be run). We think everyone should have a voice in society, so we do what we can to ensure everyone has a voice in DSA. We think society should be based on racial and gender equality, so we intentionally organize for anti-racist and anti-sexist aims. And we think society (and the economy) should be run democratically, so we strive to run our organization democratically.
Based on this, I’d like to propose a simple test: in debates over how DSA should be structured, we should think about which way we would most like society to be ordered, and opt for that option when possible.
So, then, which seems more democratic to you: an America in which voters elect the President directly (through a national popular vote), or an America in which voters cannot vote for the President, but instead vote for intermediaries who get to vote for the President? I imagine nearly all of us would say the first option is more democratic—it’s one of the reasons why our official platform opposes the existence of the Electoral College! If that’s the case, why should DSA be structured in the less democratic way?
This way of thinking about our internal democracy can also help us think through some of the objections to 1M1V. Some argue that new or less-involved members might not know the ins and outs of DSA debates and strategy, and might be making their decisions based on ignorance. Some also argue that under 1M1V, members would just vote for whoever had the highest name recognition, rather than the best candidate for the job. To combat this, they argue, we should keep with the current delegate system, since delegates are more plugged into the inner workings of the organization than “paper members”.
Let’s leave aside the question of whether these arguments have merit (to my mind, they don’t) and ask a different question instead. Even if all this were true, and rank-and-file members just don’t have enough knowledge to competently choose our leadership—would we accept this logic in our society as a whole? If some senator stood up and argued that the average voter doesn’t understand the intricacies of US politics and just picks candidates based on name recognition, so we should remove their ability to directly vote for their Congresspeople, would a single DSA member stand with them? Or would we recognize it as a breach of democracy?
These arguments against 1M1V treat direct voting for national leadership as a privilege to be earned, but we wouldn’t accept that logic in other voting contexts. So why should we accept it in DSA?
Conclusion
Our election-by-delegate system for national leadership positions is rooted in DSA’s history. Back in the 1980s, it made perfect sense for delegates to elect national leadership—technology didn’t allow for electronic voting, and it simply wasn’t feasible for national leadership candidates to communicate their message to members in far-flung chapters across the country effectively. But we no longer have to live with these material constraints. The only thing preventing us from being a mass organization with leadership democratically chosen by our members is political will.
When the United Autoworkers adopted One Member, One Vote, they elected Shawn Fain, their most militant leader in decades. When the Labour Party adopted One Member, One Vote, they elected Jeremy Corbyn, a committed socialist who brought Labour their greatest victory this century.
What will DSA accomplish?