One of the big reasons a lot of us get involved in politics and political parties is to drive changes to government policy. We may have general notions of how the government could work better or be more conservative. We also might have specific proposals that we want a UCP government to act on.

As Party members, we do this through the Party's Policy Declaration, which describes what the Party officially believes in. If you want to change this document by adding new policies or modifying existing ones, you need to have an amendment passed at an AGM Plenary Session.

Getting a change made to the Policy Declaration is a whole process in itself. The first step is writing a resolution, which is a proposal for a change or addition to a document that can be voted on. Once written, it needs to be submitted through local Constituency Associations and undergo multiple cycles of revision. After all of that, it is then passed through a ranking process, which guides the Party Board in deciding which resolutions are important enough to members. The culmination of all of these efforts is a final vote on the plenary floor.

If you are one of the many people who expend the effort required to get a policy resolution heard at the Plenary, you are seeking two related outcomes:

In fighting for the first outcome, it's important not to lose sight of the second outcome, and that's why Plenary votes are so different from the votes we try to get for the candidates we support in elections.

General elections are very much a zero-sum game. The winner gets the job they ran for and everyone else gets nothing. Additionally, the candidates are all from different political parties and are unlikely to ever agree; further negotiation would likely be useless even if it were required.

Plenary votes are very different because our policy needs to represent all of our vision. If I live in a constituency and the MLA that gets elected isn't the one I chose, I still have to accept that outcome. However, if a plenary vote results in a policy statement I don't like, I don't have to accept that policy. I can simply disengage and go elsewhere.

While UCP policies should always be essentially conservative, they should also need to be acceptable to the general public. MLAs have to win a general election with most voters not being Party members. They simply can't choose UCP members over the public; they need the support of both. While we can expect them to favour conservative ideals, we can't expect them to do things that regular voters find distasteful.

MLAs and prospective candidates are keenly aware of all of these facts, and at an AGM the more savvy ones keep an eye on a few things when it comes to plenary votes.

First off, even though the official record only tracks pass and fail, it is possible to find out the number of votes a resolution passes by if you attend the Plenary. If a resolution passes by a bare majority, it's not that popular, which gives our representatives at the Legislature some leeway to de-prioritize it. After all, if a policy statement only wins with a bare majority it's hard for them to justify risking their seat for something that the members aren't even in general agreement about.

Secondly, and just as important, is the idea of a "stacked" AGM. In-person voting at an AGM always has logistical hurdles for our membership. Alberta is a large province and travelling from places like Peace River, Fort McMurray, Lethbridge, Medicine Hat and further takes a long time and can be quite expensive. Practically speaking, this means that every AGM has unequal regional representation - people close to the location are far more likely to attend than those further away.

While it's not generally published, there are various ways to find out what regions or special interests are represented at an AGM - they are as simple as striking up a conversation at a hospitality suite or getting rough counts from Party Board scrutineering data.

Engaged MLAs will take all of these things - how popular was the vote among Plenary attendees, where were the attendees actually from, and do they represent the general will of the whole Party across the province - into account when they decide what parts of the Policy Declaration to carry forward to the Party Platform, which is written by the Party Leader and MLAs in preparation for an election, and is what they actually promise to all voters. This in turn becomes legislation if they win the election and form government.

If you are serious about having a UCP government implement your policy idea, it needs to make it into the Platform. It means that you want your policy resolution to be heard by as many members as possible and you want it to win by as many votes as possible. Only when the membership is in clear, uncontested alignment on an issue will our MLAs be compelled to turn our policies into law.

That's why we're in support of all votes involving every member, every time. We need Plenary votes that include the will of as many UCP members as possible, with as few obstacles related to travel distance, cost and time as we can manage. We don't want a vote to be restricted to any subset of the regular members that might risk its acceptance by the general voting public. And, most importantly, we want to do our best to ensure that everyone gets a chance to have their voice heard, regardless of where they live or who their friends are.