The Libertarian Party has concluded its 2008 party convention, nominating former Republican representative Bob Barr on the sixth ballot. Barr defeated a field of six other candidates, some longstanding LP members, and many to the libertarian-left (as Barr is to the libertarian-right).
The Denver convention saw over 600 delegates listen, speak, debate, and vote on the choices before them. David Weigel of Reason magazine covered the convention in detail. (He also spoke occasionally during C-Span’s excellent coverage of the convention.)
The deciding and voting takes place at the convention — delegates do not come to the convention bound to vote for a candidate (it would be hard to see libertarians imposing that requirement at their political convention.) So, there is always real uncertainty, and real drama.
The convention was not, as you can guess, a major-party affair. It was decidedly low(er) tech — paper ballots and a single laptop to calculate and display the results. (When the laptop was being used to calculate a given ballot’s results, it was not available to display the previous ballot’s standings. There are small-company meetings that have better production values.)
I saw in a comment at Reason that watching party officials count through paper ballots near the head table was embarrassing to the commenter. Well, it’s a far cry from the major part conventions. It’s not different, though, from how American counted convention votes for most of her history. Low tech, but not unworthy of us.
From Reason magazine —
1) A discussion among some LP candidates, including LP presidential nominee Barr:
2) David Weigel’s assessment of the LP convention, entitled, “Live from the LP Convention: U-N-I-T-Y.”
3) Weigel’s story, “Citizen Bob,” on how former GOP congressman Bob Barr became the 2008 LP nominee.