Last updated on October 8, 2023
Libertarian National Committee Financial and Membership Reports have recently become very late. However, the Treasurer on September 26 filed the end-of-July report, which includes a graph of National Party memberships at the end of each month for some years previous.
Membership at the end of June was 13,620. Membership at the end of July was about (read off graph) 11,900-12,000. That’s a fall of 1600-1700, close to 12%, in one month. In addition, I am seeing complaints from former life members that they had recently resigned their life membership, and the resignation did not appear to have been counted.
[Addendum: However, there is now the end-of-August financial report, according to which the end-of-month membership counts for July and August were 13,620 and 12,728, respectively. That’s a drop of 400 in one month, or a less dramatic 3+% decline.]
Has anyone compiled a list of which state parties are Mises-controlled and which are not?
Meant to write 2020. The keyboard on the iPad is sometimes just a bit too small. 🙂
I believe that an investigation would show that this has been an ongoing problem for a number of years. I resigned from both the state party and national party in July 2000. When I resigned, I specifically requested that I be listed as do not contact, do not email, do not, etc. etc. etc.
I checked a few months later and noticed that I was still listed as a life member on the national party website, where anyone can look up your name. You can also view life members in a particular state. Or at least you could then. I do not visit the national party website at all anymore, so I do not know if that horribly invasive and privacy stripping feature is still there.
After months and months and months of communication at the state and national level, I was finally removed as a life member sometime in the spring of 2021. Most people when they quit just walk away. But if you asked to be removed as a life member of the LP, you will find that is easier to leave the United Methodist Church, an organization notorious for never removing former members from their rolls. (I was still listed as a member of the local church in my hometown more than 25 years after I left. My father‘s picture was still on a wall there over 60 years after he stopped attending in the 1960s. I believe it is still there.)
The Party does not want evidence that people are leaving. So while they will take your money to become a life member, and even though you are not asking for the money back, they will resist removing you from their rolls when you leave.
I still get contacted by people asking for donations or support for their campaigns. If I ask, I am told that they got a list from the national party. I was on it, but I should not have been. A few former colleagues have called me from time to time to ask for support, but they only do it because they were not aware that I had left.
There are many forms of corruption. This is just one small example of how the national libertarian party has been slowly failing for years.
I had a very different experience. I joined the LP in 1974. I resigned all memberships in 1985 (I was never a Life Member but was a monthly pledger to programs at the national, state and county level). I requested that my name be purged and it was. When I came back in 1995 there was no record that I had ever been a member before. If it were not for my membership card with Ed Crane’s signature from a Kearny Street address in San Francisco I might have doubted it myself!
My understanding is the crash began in the year before as there is a 12 month lag on removing people from the membership rolls.