[Fmpro] Update: 1, 250 signatures now required for independent ASCAP Board candidates

[Mark Northam]

On 8/20/07 7:26 PM, "Jim Chase" <jchase at billyhalemusic.com> wrote:

> 
>      I wonder who came up with the apparently arbitrary value of
> 4.167% of the total voting membership signatures needed to have one's
> name placed on the ballot?
> 
>     Please check my math: 1250 = X% of 300,000
> X= 4.1666 percent... assuming all members receive ballots (not true;
> only paid ASCAP members receive ballots in that voting year.)
> 
> ... especially when it used to be 25 signatures -- %0.0001 -- way
> back when ASCAP membership was (an estimated) 250,000.
>    Five years ago.
> 
>    That same %0.0001 percentage today would amount to the signatures
> of just more than 30 voting members.  No need to check the math here,
> even if my figures are off by a factor of 10, the disparity is
> clearly overwhelming.
> 
>     Q: As long as the ASCAP ruling board is putting forth random
> requirements -- making it nearly impossible for new contenders to get
> on the ballot -- why don't they just make it a nice, round number,
> like "unanimous"?   I'll field this one.  A: Too simple, and
> transparent.


The logic ASCAP uses to justify this is that they reverse engineered the
numbers after observing that 25 was 5/8ths of 1% of the number of TOTAL
(voting + nonvoting) members at the time (40+ years ago) that the rule was
first written. The ASCAP board, in a transparent attempt to protect their
own scared jobs, decided to keep the same proportion in place, creating
language that made the number of signatures on the election ballot for
independent candidates 5/8ths of one percent of the total number of writer
members. So as the membership grows, so does the number of signatures
required for the ballots, but it's a moot point now as the number is far
larger than anything it's practical for anyone but an extremely wealthy
candidate to perhaps achieve.

The double whammy comes in when the ASCAP Board's language additionally
specified that only VOTING members could sign the petition. So the NUMBER of
signatures is based on ALL writer members, but only VOTING writer members'
signatures are valid on the petition. Now of course, in keeping with the
ultimate secrecy of the ASAP high command, they will not release the number
of VOTING  writer members (those who received distribution within the 12
months before the election), but by all accounts the number is a very small
percentage of total writer members.

To add insult to injury, the ASCAP Board also added language that only the
first two members to achieve this number of signatures in any election could
be on the ballot. As if anyone had any real chance of doing it anyway. And
in a final act of the "middle finger" to any members who dared even think
about running as independent candidates for the election, the Board created
new language that removed the requirement that ASCAP provide contact info
for voting writer members to candidates, thus ensuring candidates no way to
even know who the voting members are, much less have any reasonable way to
contact them. Funny how these rules, in place for over 40 years without
incident, suddenly needed to be eliminated so quickly and so radically. What
were they afraid of? Or perhaps, who?

It doesn't take a math degree to see the obvious intentions of these rules -
to make sure that there will never be any real chance of an independent
candidate getting on the ballot, leaving the board's "nominating committee"
to choose their own handpicked "opponents" for the elections. And in recent
elections, unless someone has chosen not to run, all the incumbents get
re-elected. What a surprise! And then to watch ASCAP and its board crow
about how all the board was re-elected... As if that wasn't already expected
given the "opponents" that are chosen for the ballot. And of course no vote
counts are released, further destroying any hint of transparency in the
process. The justification for that? To spare the losing candidates and
humiliation. As if that justifies keeping the entire voting counts a deep,
dark secret at ASCAP.

It's a sickening corruption of the democratic principles on which ASCAP was
founded, and represents little more than the Board hijacking the election
process to blatantly serve their own personal interests - to keep themselves
elected by making sure no names are on the ballot other than those "chosen"
by the nominating committee. Until these people have the integrity to run in
fair and open elections, I assume everything they do is motivated by the
same personal greed and self-promotion that motivated them to wreck the
election process for independent candidates the way they did and continue to
do. They have used the power we, ASCAP members, gave them in the election
process to ensure their own personal survival on the board, and that kind of
self-serving behavior does not warrant the respect of ASCAP members.

That these guys get away with this year after year, election after election
says volumes about the apathy and lack of information that ASCAP members
have about their elected Board members. Simply put, they either don't know,
or don't care. And that is a sad state of affairs indeed.

Best,

Mark Northam