If you helped get out the vote, how about running?

DA country committees and chapters will be holding elections between January and June 31. 

You can look at your country or chapter online for information at https://www.democratsabroad.org/countries, but check a few times as they will be posted over several months.  

Also look to receive in coming months an email soliciting candidates (it might arrive in your “promotions” folder if you have gmail). 

You may also want to contact your country committee or chapter chair now to discuss the process, deadline to declare candidacy, how to write a candidate statement, what positions are elected and how to run. 

You can run at both the chapter and country level, and in some cases you can also run for both country committee leadership and DPCA voting rep.  What is a DPCA voting rep? Read on.

DPCA Voting Members are elected. Could you be one?

If you want to push forward issues or policies or practices within DA that you think are on the more progressive side, keep in mind that Country Committee Chairs and DPCA* voting reps elected in each country get to elect DA global leadership (including 2 DNC members), help make changes to DA’s charter, and vote on DA’s resolutions on legislation and other issues.

The more progressive voices on DPCA, the more progressive resolutions get proposed and passed for consideration by the DNC and DA’s 2020 Platform. You should be able to see the current DPCA Voting Reps on the webpage for your country, under “leadership”.  Find your country’s webpage at https://www.democratsabroad.org/countries.

 Travel is not required, as all DPCA meetings can be attended remotely via webconference.  There is also a Travel Fund to help with costs.

 Smaller countries have only the Country Chair and Vice Chair as DPCA voting members. Larger countries have more DPCA votes, based on their general membership numbers, so they may elect as many as 20 other DPCA voting reps, many by virtue of their positions on a country Executive Committee, but sometimes elected specifically as a DPCA voting representative.

 Some country committee chairs and vice chairs actually hold multiple DPCA votes.  DA encourages these countries to transition to having one vote per person, but some countries have had challenges making the transition.

 If you are interested in running for election, please let ProDA leadership know by completing this form.

 *DPCA The governing body of Democrats Abroad is the Democratic Party Committee Abroad (DPCA), which oversees Democrats Abroad's activities. To avoid confusion between local committees and the international body, we refer to our international body as the DPCA, but are known collectively as Democrats Abroad by the general public and media. The DPCA is comprised of the Chair and Vice Chair of each Country Committee, the other elected DPCA Voting members from each applicable country committee, and the elected international officers of the DPCA (International Chair, International Vice Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, Counsel, 3 Regional Vice Chairs), as well as the six representatives of Democrats Abroad to the DNC. (The remaining two members of the DNC from Democrats Abroad are the International Chair and International Vice Chair.)