Last updated on June 12, 2025
Debate over the P Transaction continued through the April 1997 LNC meeting. According to its Minutes,
“Steve Dasbach described an arrangement where contributors to the Harry Browne for President campaign received a subscription to LP News and the campaign gave $25 to the party. He noted a correction to the 1996 income statement: it should show a $58,050 credit to membership income representing the dues payments and a $58,050 debit to prospecting expenses representing the value of the names provided by the campaign.
“Joe Dehn questioned the propriety of the original arrangement and the lack of documentation. It started before Harry Browne won the nomination and there was no written agreement. Joe Dehn said it violated the bylaws because the LNC sets dues and the LNC did not pass a resolution on this policy. Steve Dasbach said the policy was discussed at LNC and LNC Executive Committee meetings.”
Dehn, in calling my attention to this section of the Minutes, advised me
“— technically they were not being “made members” as a result of the contributions, but rather becoming members whose dues were current. But I was surprised by this, and my point was that this was not something that should have been done without people knowing. I was annoyed both at the idea that the staff had essentially taken upon themselves to redefine the dues requirement—a job assigned by the bylaws to the LNC—and at the idea that the measurement of our progress according to paid membership, which I had been carefully tracking for years, had been suddenly distorted without any warning.
“In response to my complaint that it was a bylaws violation, the first explanation was that it had been approved. But nobody could show me when it had been approved. The story then became that the Browne campaign was going to pay for these memberships—they had intended to do this all along. I never saw any evidence that this plan had occurred to anybody before I asked, either, but I was willing to accept that as being in conformance with the bylaws, since we didn’t have any rule against one person paying for another person’s membership. As long as _somebody_ paid the $25, the principle of the dues being set by the LNC was safe. I was still annoyed about the distortion of the count, but there didn’t seem to be anything I could do about that—the damage had been done.
“But in the end they didn’t really pay it. They just created some silly entries in the accounting system so they could claim to have paid it.”
Indeed, the reader will note that the cost of the memberships turned out to be $58,050, corresponding to 2,322 new members, and what should have been the independently-determined value of the names supplied from the Campaign to the LNC by astonishing coincidence turned out to be exactly the same $58,050. As a result of the coincidence, Browne owed the Party nothing for the members, and the Party owed Browne nothing for the names. It is interesting to note—referring ahead to a 1999 anomaly—that I have been told by sources within the LNC that Browne may have cut another deal on these same names, transferring them to the Party in exchange for which Browne’s 2000 campaign got free use of Party mailing lists or components thereof. If these sources were correct, the Party would appear to have paid a very high price for the list of names.
The author is amused to note that when a few years later the Libertarian Party of Massachusetts turned over to the National Party the names of more than 2000 registered Libertarian Party voters, names generated by my 1996 U.S. Senate Campaign effort, my voters did not get the same benefits. They were instead treated to Project Archimedes letters. Nor did my campaign—which was not consulted in advance about the transaction—receive any benefits from the National Party. Indeed, the thanks that I received from the National Party for my 1996 effort was an eventual apology for having hired away some of my professional petitioners, probably costing me (based on those petitioners’ estimates of their collection rates) ballot access for my 1996 Senate campaign.
Dasbach’s report specifying the cost of the 2,322 names to the LP neglects to mention that under his secret contract with Willis those 2,322 additional members increased Willis’s salary by $8000 or more per year.
Doctor Phillies I am a bit confused. I thought candidates got to use the mailing list free of charge. Was this all before he had the nomination?
I do not know the current rules. The rules may have changed.
Discussion has gotten completely off topic. Discuss the original post or expect to be declined.
Pat Jones, a lot of what you mention in your next to last paragraph has all ready happened and needs to be addressed by management.
I am not happy addressing this issue in this manner. But here goes.
A lot of people who have been on the LNC do not seem to understand how to go about promoting issues the LP should be promoting, or how to use an asset such as a list of registered voters, To me this is a simple issue, but I do not have time to devote to it now. Later in the week or next two weeks ‘ll put something together on it.
To the best of my knowledge sticking the adjective “member” in front of someone’s name does not require them to do anything. However, the law
may require the party to do something.
It might be smart to use that list, or those list to promote the LP.
I’ve been a critic of the Lp’s policy on membership for a number of years. I think recognizing everyone who is registered as a Libertarian voter as a starting point
30 states plus DC have partisan voter registration. 20 states do not have partisan voter registration. So in 20 states it is impossible to register to vote as a Libertarian.
True but in Oregon, as I recall, if you are registered as a libertarian voter then the law recognizes you as a member. That might be true in other states as well.
What do you propose they do in the other half of the states that don’t have such an option, either because they don’t have registration by party or because they’re not a recognized party?
Any number of things can be done to promote the LP AND TJHEY ALL HAVE PROBABLY BEEN DONE SUCCESSFULLY BY OTHERS. Shouting was not intended.
I don’t think you understood my question. If the criterion of membership is voter registration by party, the question was what would count as a member in the states where there is no such option. Andy said 20 states have no registration by party. There are additionally several more states where there is registration by party, but libertarians are not one of the parties into which people can register as voters with the state. They either don’t have a party write in, or they don’t disclose how many people wrote in unrecognized parties. So only about half of the states have a known number of registered libertarian voters.
Under your proposal what would count as membership in those remaining states?
Just use a definition in the bylaws to define what a member is and that can be written a number of ways which is what has been done over the years in most places.
There is more to this story and I may get around to posting it this weekend.
Here’s another complication. Arkansas has partisan voter registration, but they do not have any party check boxes on their voter registration forms. There is a box in which it says a person can write in the name of a political party, but the form says it is optional. So most people in Arkansas who register to vote leave that box blank. So Arkansas has a larger than average percentage of non-partisan registered voters for a state which has partisan voter registration. Arkansas allows non-partisan registered voters to vote in primaries so even self identified Democrats and Republicans have little incentive to write in the words Democratic or Republican on their voter registration form. Also, the only way for minor parties to gain recognized status in Arkansas is by getting at least 3% for President or for Governor (gubernatorial races are held in the mid term in between presidential elections). So minor polutical parties in Arkansas can’t gaim recognized status by having a certain percentage of partisan voter registrations, therefore minor party supporters have less incentive to register undet their preferred party label.
A more inclusive set of criteria could be:
Anyone currently registered Libertarian with the state.
Anyone who signed the Libertarian pledge.
Anyone who donated to either a state or national party within the last year.
Libertarian membership would then be somewhere between 850,000 and 1,000,000.
I recall seeing that one of the leftists organizations counted anyone as a member who had donated at any point within the last two years. Might have been DSA. I’m not looking it up.
The downside to using registered voters is that it requires access to state government databases for determining delegate allocation to the national convention.
I signed the silly libertarian pledge in 1987 to help Ron Paul seek their presidential nomination. I have not formally withdrawn my signature. The last time I sent them any money was 2008, which made me a member by their usual definition through 2009.
Are you sure you want to count me as a current member? I don’t consider myself to be a libertarian. According to you, and several others here and elsewhere, I could have never been one in the first place, since I supported Governor Wallace for President in 1967-8 and helped him get on the ballot in several states as a youngster – I couldn’t actually vote for him, as the voting age was 21 then. I wonder who you and others who say this think libertarians should have supported for President in 1968, but that’s besides the point – I’m sure there are many people and issues I’ve supported over the years and continue to support which exclude me from your idea of libertarian.
So, good luck chasing down a hundred thousand or more people who signed their pledge over the years to see what they think now. I’m sure many don’t recall signing it. At the time I signed it, it was merely a formality so I could participate in their nomination process, and it was explained to me that it means I don’t support armed revolution, which I didn’t and don’t. However, some other people have radically different ideas about what it means.
The discussion, not this comment, is getting seriously off topic of the post.
Your post spends some time on the question of who is made a member of your party and how. I must have broken some rule in the unapproved comment, but it directly related to Mike’s point that extending current membership to hundreds of thousands of former members like myself doesn’t obligate us to do anything.
My main point was that while it’s true that it doesn’t, it does extend to us voting rights on everything from your presidential nomination to your platform, bylaws, and national committee. I also cautioned readers to not presume most pledge signers from past decades are currently libertarians, and while there’s no reason to assume that some of them may want to “take over” your party and make of it who knows what, the possibility can’t be precluded. If any other parts of what I said rise to your standards, as always with any of my comment submissions, please publish what does and […exclude…] what doesn’t.
You’re quite correct that I didn’t comment on the 1996 or 2000 particulars, but neither did anyone else. Certainly, someone still could, if they find that interesting. Instead, I followed the flow of the discussion, which stemmed from a matter you did in fact discuss in your post.
As an alternative, might you post a separate topic to discuss membership definitions more broadly, if you think the discussion as it’s taken shape thus far discourages anyone who is interested in 1996 / 2000 matters from commenting on those here?
Why would supporting Geirge Wallace for President in 1968 permanently bar a person from ever being a libertarian? The Libertarian Party did not even exist in 1968 and people’s views can change. People have different reasons for supporting candidates. Sometimes it is based on a single issue or the list of candidates running and the circumstances of the time period.
Andy, 1) please read the remark in context, 2) I would love to provide various kinds of additional context and ask a number of related questions, such as whether any randomized studies or polls have ever been done of e.g. the average current political views of past libertarian pledge signers who have not formally revoked their signature and/or registered libertarian voters.
However, we’ve already been cautioned we are veering off topic, and I’ve already had comments rejected in this discussion. I’ve asked in a comment that remains currently published at least for now whether a separate topic to discuss these questions could be put up, due to the prior caution note and comment rejection. The question wasn’t answered.
I also offered in another comment that was rejected to re-edit a published comment, add my questions etc so it could be an article and the discussion wouldn’t be off topic. I asked because I don’t want to spend time on it if it won’t be published, or is unlikely to be published. However, that comment was also rejected, so absent further guidance I have to assume the answer is no and not spend time re-editing to make it an article.
So the best I can do for now, if I’m even allowed to do that much, is explain the relevance here. Some people in this discussion have proposed changing your party definition of membership to include past members who haven’t revoked their pledge signatures but are not recent donors and/or are registered to vote as libertarian. If that happens, you greatly alter who all has voting rights on what your party stands for, who it’s candidates are, who manages it, etc.
Having those voting rights doesn’t mean they have to be exercised, but there’s no way to know ahead of time who will or won’t exercise those rights or organise likeminded people with similar views to themselves, or how effectively, to change what your party represents and in what ways or direction or to what purpose.
I’m personally not the point of any of this, but just an illustration of it: I am a pledge signer since 1987, have most recently donated in 2008, and I don’t consider myself a libertarian – the last time I did was very shortly after I last donated, maybe some time less than a year after that.
You may personally agree or disagree with Jim, as well as various others here, who have specifically said in past discussions here that who I supported in the general presidential election way back in 1968 and in the 1972 presidential primary disqualifies me from ever being a libertarian, but that’s way besides an admittedly very tangential point of an already tangential discussion.
It’s highly likely that some of my other issue positions or votes etc would disqualify me as a libertarian even in your estimation, even if you disagree with Jim, but that’s still off the point, only very slightly less so.
To bring it back to what I hope is on topic enough, if you greatly alter the membership qualifications as Mike and Jim have suggested, you can’t predict what direction your party could take ideologically or organizationally. It might make little or no difference. Or, some of the newly enfranchised decision-makers might successfully organise to, for instance, change your party’s official ideology in unpredictable ways and to an unpredictable extent, or, for example, formally dissolve it, for instance because they now think it’s a spoiler or an embarrassment to small l libertarianism or whatever, or because they think it should not ever run presidential candidates again, or not run federal or statewide candidates, or not run its own candidates but only endorse candidates of major parties or not – and those are just some of many potential examples.
It’s that discussion and various matters tangential to it which I’d like to have without it being off topic. If this is still off topic, I’m interested in how it can be made on topic, and have provided a couple of suggestions on how with no reply, whilst other comments that continue to explore the same tangent of the topic posts from various people continue to be published after the aforementioned caution note and comment rejections.
Pat – All pledge signers are party members, currently. There are different levels of membership. Some state parties require members to be dues paying in order to participate in internal party matters while others do not. The suggested change in the count of members was to include those registered to vote as Libertarian.
Currently considered party members:
Pledge signers, without paying dues (227,100)
Pledge signers while being current on dues (9,800)
Current members: 236,900
Not currently considered party members, but who reasonably could be:
Donors who did not sign the pledge (data no longer published, but usually less than 10% of donors. Maybe 300.)
People registered to vote as Libertarian (745,000)
Data on non-dues paying Signature members by state is no longer published but, going by old reports, around 100,000 should be in states without Libertarian voter registration. There should be significant overlap between those registered L and those who signed the pledge in states where registering L is an option. Maybe 90%. Assume 10% signed the pledge but registered with another party for primary voting reasons. Maybe 13,000 in that category.
745,000 registered Libertarians + 100,000 Signature Members in states without registration by party + 13,000 Signature members whose voter registration is with a different party + 10,000 donors = 868,000.
One can be (but should not be) a Libertarian while supporting the ideology of George Wallace, but one cannot be a libertarian.
I do not intend to reply further on this topic under this post.